


Between Dreams and Temptations

by Tasogareban



Category: Reylo - Fandom, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Violence, Dubious Consent, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gratuitous Smut, Minor Poe Dameron/Finn, So much smut, Threats of Violence, Violence, why did I write so much smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 10:14:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 38
Words: 171,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12408453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tasogareban/pseuds/Tasogareban
Summary: Six months after the events on StarKiller Base, Rey has been taken on as an apprentice to Luke Skywalker. However, she begins to dream of a man that brings her body to life in the night and is unrecognizable in her waking hours. When he comes for her and spirits her away to the new First Order base, Rey is forced to reconcile her dreams with the nightmare she has been thrust into.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TigerOfSummer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerOfSummer/gifts).



> Disclaimers: The entire Star Wars universe and any familiar characters in this fic do not belong to me. They belong to creators George Lucas, J.J. Abrams, Rian Johnson and all of the wonderful people behind the scenes. The plot of this fic does belong to me though. Also, I always welcome good-natured comments and constructive criticism but nothing else (no flames, no insults, nothing disrespectful). 
> 
> Spoilers/Timeline: Just to be on the safe side, all of the Star Wars movies including The Force Awakens with possible spoilers/snippets from The Last Jedi. This fic takes place after the events in The Force Awakens.
> 
> Beta: Tigerofsummer at Tumblr. She is amazing and wonderful and a sweetheart and I will FIGHT YOU for her. 
> 
> Author Note (A/N): Though not in the same universe or timeline as Emergence, I use a lot of the same elements from that story since I always see places and events the same in my head: Kylo Ren’s room will be similar to his room in Emergence. The Resistance base and the First Order base have the same elements territory-wise as they did in Emergence. Also, when I say explicit, I mean explicit. There is a ton of smut in this fic along with a plot. Be prepared.

**Prologue:**

 

                “What were you thinking?” Rey demanded as her borrowed X-wing touched down, winds blowing fiercely under her descent.

                She glanced toward the squadron leader to her right as he landed his X-Wing at the end of the Resistance base landing strip, his gestures manic. Her own hands flew across the piloting console expertly, bringing the engines down to a low hum, knowing she would need to slowly calm them before being able to shut the craft down completely. The ship would need vast tune-ups and she suspected the mechanics on the base would see it immediately once she put the work orders in and left the ship in the hangar bay.

                She realized she had tuned out half of Finn’s response as he had begun to speak from his image on the small screen on her dash. It was due to her inability to focus fully lately because of those damn dreams, because of the anger. “Wait, what?” she questioned distractedly before coming back to the situation at hand and feeling the unease rise inside of her again. “No! You should’ve told me!”

                “This was _not_ my call,” Finn stated as her craft finally powered down into silence. “You know I have _no_ say over _anything_ that goes on here, and Poe went and-“

                “The General, then,” she snapped irritably, flicking off switches and lowering levers back to their starting positions. “Though I’m not sure that’s the best call on her part, either-“

               “It wasn’t her call! She was with you!” Finn shouted, his image garbling onscreen for a moment that she wasn’t sure she had heard correctly.

                “What?”

                The squadron leader’s orange and white uniformed figure jumped down and came running from his X-Wing, motioning to base crew to look after his prized craft as he raced across the landing strip and passed right by her in her own X-wing, not slowing down in the least as he disappeared within the base.

                “It wasn’t the General’s call, either,” Finn repeated from her console.

                She blinked rapidly, frowning, before finally stopping and settling in her seat. Turning back around to stare at Finn’s tense face in her monitor in confusion, she paused, her heart beginning to race as fast as the squadron leader had when he had streaked past her. “Finn, what do you mean it wasn’t the General’s call? Didn’t you _talk_ to her before doing this?” she demanded. And her hand suddenly streaked to her face, smacking into the helmet she forgot that she still wore, as it all clicked into place. All of it. The news of the capture, of the win, the revelries in knowing that the Resistance had dealt the First Order yet one more blow in their attempt to cripple them by not only surviving an assault but also capturing their prized knight, the same monster that she had thought long dead, left behind in that snowy landscape of StarKiller. “Wait. No. _No_. No, no, no-“

                “Yes,” Finn replied wearily. “The General’s coming in with you but she’s only now being filled in. She was out of communications with us while she was gone, you all were! And I don’t think she’s happy-“

                _“Let him go!”_ Rey shouted frantically and she began to unbuckle the restraints, fumbling with them when they wouldn’t give, when they wouldn’t release her. Finally freeing herself from the pilot seat desperately, she flung the restraints aside, her pulse pounding in her ears, her heart threatening to break free of her chest. Reaching up wildly, she yanked the helmet off and tossed it aside, indifferent as to where it landed in the small compartment. “Finn, let him go! He’s not a prisoner! _He’s not a prisoner!_ ” And she sprang from the chair and was already hopping up out of the ship to disembark as the overhead shielding slid open, as Finn’s voice followed her from the console.

                “Rey! _Rey-_ “

                _“It’s a trap!”_ she cried back as she ran. “He’s not a prisoner! _He let himself be captured!”_

 

 

**Next Chapter: Chapter One: Book One - The Light**

 

He always came to her in the night.

She never saw his face when she dreamt of him and it wasn’t that he hid it from her, not exactly. Or maybe he did and he could somehow manipulate her dreams, make her see things. Make her _not_ see things. But the fact remained that he came at night, always, and he never showed her his face.

 


	2. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, I just posted the first playlist/soundtrack/disc to this story over at 8tracks and also on my Spotify. The links are below, please check them out. I really do think each song fits each chapter of the books. 8tracks is the only site that has story snippets of where I think the song actually fits in each chapter but they have some pretty rigid rules now for free accounts so Spotify might be the better bet for some of you. Anyways, here are the links:
> 
> Book I on 8tracks: https://8tracks.com/tasogareban/between-dreams-and-temptations-disc-i-the-light
> 
> Book I on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/1247769491/playlist/7DY7DA1JSA4bnjOv9NlQKd
> 
> Let me know if the links don't work. Enjoy!

**Between Dreams and Temptations**

 

**Book One – The Light**

 

Chapter One:

 

                He always came to her in the night.

                She never saw his face when she dreamt of him and it wasn’t that he hid it from her, not exactly. Or maybe he did and he could somehow manipulate her dreams, make her see things. Make her _not_ see things. But the fact remained that he came at night, always, and he never showed her his face.

                Well. To be quite honest with herself, he didn’t really exist. She was sure she had made him up; had taken features from other men, from people she knew or saw in passing. That or he did exist and she had mischievously manipulated him into her dreams, blaming him in the end for the things she did to herself without meaning to.

                There was something familiar about him, though. She just couldn’t put her finger on what. She could remember small details about him when she woke in the morning, after the dawn stole her less vibrant memories of what had transpired and left her with only the very vivid ones; the flashes that never made any sense but when they caught her unprepared, could bring goose flesh to her skin.

                He was tall. Very tall. Taller than most of the men on the Resistance base. She found herself searching for him as she passed the men in the corridors, as she would bid friends and acquaintances a good morning. None of them came close to her visitor’s height and even if they did, everything else about them was wrong; too lanky, too big, too round. None of them fit her stranger’s height or his broad-shouldered frame. Every morning she looked again, searching. He was familiar. She had to know him from somewhere, from this new base. She had only begun to dream of him since she had come here.

                Who _was_ he?

               The Force was a fickle thing, she realized yet again almost grumpily. It swayed and tumbled almost silently deep inside of her, all around her, sparking information at the strangest time. But every question she had concerning the man in her dreams, the man in the shadows, remained unanswered, the information hidden.

                That morning, she entered the mess hall and paused just inside the doorway, her eyes scanning the crowd of Resistance members partaking in breakfast, her stomach already rumbling. Ever since she had begun receiving food on a schedule, she had started noticing how _often_ she craved food; constantly, in the middle of the night, in the midst of her trainings and her meditations. In the middle of assisting Poe in his classes of flight simulations. Her hunger had once erupted loudly and embarrassingly in the quiet room of aspiring pilots. The group had laughed at her good-naturedly but the point of the matter was that if she hadn’t been training herself so extensively, she would have ballooned in weight, and _happily_.

                “Fancy meeting you here,” chided the presence that appeared at her side. “Of all places, I mean.”

                She fought the eye roll for a split second before allowing it life. “Very funny,” she said as she tilted her head to look at Finn.

                “I think you mean good morning. _‘Good morning, Finn.’_ Good morning to you, too. Rey. _‘You look fabulous today, Finn.’_ Don’t I, though?” The dark-skinned young man managed to look thrilled as the one-sided conversation ensued, as Rey merely stared at him with the shadow of a smile on her lips. “I’ve been working out.”

                With a shake of her head, Rey moved into the food hall, making her way to the line that had formed. She felt him fall into step behind her, still hovering over her shoulder. Turning to glance at him, she asked innocently, her voice lilting with her accent, “Oh, are you done complimenting yourself?”

                “Yes, yes I am,” he stated with a definitive nod, scanning the selection of breakfast foods being served.

                This time Rey did gift him with a smile, her light gaze drifting down his figure for a moment before facing forward once more.

                It had taken Finn six months to recover from the injuries sustained that day on StarKiller Base; several weeks merely in a square tank of bacta embedded in the med lab floor and then several more weeks of surgeries to repair the injuries to his spine and shoulders before being tossed back into bacta. Then several _more_ weeks of physical therapy to strengthen the nerves, the tendons, the muscles, that had been severed and mended. He had come out of it all a bit quieter, distracted in the strangest moments, but his sense of humor had survived the ordeal, as had his good spirits.

                She supposed they owed a large measure of that to Poe Dameron.

                “Speaking of, where is Poe this morning?” she asked as the line advanced slowly.

                Finn started. “When did we start talking about him?” he asked in surprise.

                Rey blinked and looked at him. “Right,” she said a moment later, her eyes squeezing shut. “Sorry, had a thought go sideways on me.”

                Finn arched a brow, causing her to shake her head and smile slightly again.

                “Don’t look at me like that. We know he only has eyes for one person between us and it’s not me,” she teased him impishly and then, before Finn could respond to that, it was her turn on the line.

                He made a few stuttering noises behind her as she collected a tray and thanked the droid servers reflexively. She piled up food from every station, her eyes almost dancing to see it all being distributed by metal claws. And as she reached the end of the line, she tossed Finn a look. “What’s that you said?”

                “Nothing,” came the subdued reply.

                Leaving the line, Rey searched the mess hall and zoned in on their usual table. It stood unoccupied still. Any earlier in the day and she would’ve lost it to the new recruits. The latest group was young, her age actually, but unlike her they still had stars in their eyes and a brash fight in their hearts.

                Not that she still didn’t, but her trainings with Luke had definitely wiped that brand-new scent off her. As she reached the table, she glanced over her shoulder to see Finn darting to catch up to her. “What are you up to today?” she asked him, lowering her tray to the table and seating herself.

                He plopped into the seat opposite her and shrugged. “Nothing much. I still haven’t been assigned anything. I have another session for therapy. That’s always fun.”

                Rey arched a brow in acknowledgement. “Maybe if there were actual personnel, sure,” she replied. “I know how you hate having to do your therapy with the droids. _Grabby Hands_. Wasn’t that the phrase you used?”

                “Grabby Claws,” he corrected her, already digging into his breakfast. “Medics left a few days ago, left only a few guides and the whole assortment of med droids. They have to adjust the parameters on the one that they keep assigning to me. I still have some bruises from last time.”

                Rey grimaced. “Ouch. Still?”

                He shrugged and took a bite of what seemed to be a flatbread. “What do they have you doing today?” he asked instead around a mouthful.

                Finn didn’t talk about the time he had spent recovering nor did he dwell on the subject much. He never mentioned the fight on StarKiller base at all, let alone the man that had nearly killed him. She had sat by his side for all those months when she hadn’t been training, fingers tracing the rims of the bacta tank lazily, feeling a muffled, throbbing pain deep inside of her.

                That man, Han Solo’s son, had done this to them. He had almost ripped her first real friend from her and she had felt that pain so much in that time that it had become physical; her back had begun to hurt, her shoulders, her ribs. Even her face had been tender at times as she had lifted her fingers from the edges of the tank and trailed them along her jaw. She had fallen asleep numerous times beside Finn’s comatose form and it had been then, sleeping fitfully beside her friend that she had begun to dream of the stranger. His appearances had been fleeting then; once a week or every couple of weeks. And back then he had been a mere shadow, hovering at the very edges of her dreams and vanishing if she found herself turning to look for him.

                Only in the last three months had he become far more tangible, come through clearer. By then, the medical staff had moved Finn from the bacta tanks and had begun his physical therapy.

                For weeks, she thought she had dreamt of Finn. The visits in her dreams had become numerous by then, every other night, then every night. But then they had taken a turn that she hadn’t wanted to take with Finn, not when he was such a friend to her. And those days that she had wondered if it could’ve been Finn in her dreams, she had been unable to meet his eyes in embarrassment.

                But he didn’t resemble the dark shadow of her fantasies; Finn had neither the height nor the proper frame to be him. And so she had been able to face him once more in time for all her earlier aches and pains to disappear now that Finn was physically recuperating. 

                Lowering her spoon into a bowl of soup, Rey hesitated. Bantha steak stew. Not what she had expected when she had picked the dish but who was she to complain? “Supply run,” she finally replied. “Running low so the Captain is sending a group out to replenish. He asked me if I wanted to go and I said yes. We’ve been cooped up in here for a bit already, what’s a breath of fresh air?”

                “A hell of a lot to ask for, especially because you’re you,” Finn stated with an arched brow.

                Rey merely chuckled. “Well, seeing as how Luke has disappeared again, there’s no point just waiting around for him to return. You know how he moves. It’s already been three weeks since he passed through. Might as well do the supply run in the meantime.” She took a gulp of the stew and trained her eyes on Finn, her light eyes dropping to his food before shooting back up. “They also wanted to keep Poe here, just in case. If not, he would’ve escorted the cargo ship.”

                “Sending you, then. Precious cargo and all.”

                “Stop.” Rey rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to her food.

                They ate in silence for a breath, Rey lifting her gaze to search the mess hall again. No one familiar, no one with the proper height or build. No one that could pass for the shadow in her dream. “Finn…”

                “Hmmm?”

                She sighed softly. “Do you ever…dream about people?” she asked slowly.

                He arched a brow. “Sure. All the time,” he answered.

                “Really?” she asked, her attention shooting back to him. And then she reconsidered her question. “Well, I mean, not like _people_. Like someone. Like one person in particular. Just over and over again. Do you do that?”

                Finn lowered his bread down slightly. “The same person?”

                She nodded.

                “No, not the same person. I mean, I’ve had the same nightmare a few times but that’s…the chief medical officer assigned to this new base, he said it would be natural that I would dream of…the things that I do,” he explained hesitantly. “I saw the psychiatrist and she said it would be slow going but that I’m showing very positive results. But I dream of…well, him. Still. Sometimes,” he replied with an uncomfortable lift of his shoulder before shoving more of the flatbread into his mouth.

                Rey’s eyes saddened slightly as she watched her friend turn his gaze away to the mess hall.

                Of course Finn would still have nightmares. He had almost been killed in that battle on StarKiller six months earlier. If Chewbacca hadn’t arrived with the Millennium Falcon, they wouldn’t have escaped from the crumbling ice planet at all. They would’ve died right along with Han and his wretched son.

                And now that she was thinking of _him_ as well, how strange that he would resemble the man in her dreams? The right height, the same broad shoulders. Blackness upon more blackness.

                But she didn’t have nightmares. She had dreams. Very private, very intimate dreams. Dreams that sometimes left her a bit breathless in the morning or in the middle of the night.

                Dreams that she would never have of _him_.

                “When do you leave on the supply run?” Finn asked, returning his attention to his breakfast and to Rey.

                “In a couple of hours,” she said, quietly clearing her throat and her mind of Kylo Ren. “I can ask for you to come along if you want out of here for a little while? I remember you said that you were getting antsy a few days ago-“

                “Nah, it’s okay,” Finn said with a wave of his hand. “I won’t be much use to anyone if anything bad happens. Not that I’m saying anything will!” He added on quickly as Rey’s eyebrows jumped up. “It’s just a supply run.”

                “Just a supply run,” Rey stressed, her spoon hanging between her mouth and her stew.

                “Just a supply run,” Poe Dameron chipped in as he appeared beside their table with his own tray. “I heard they were taking you,” he said, eyes falling on Rey from under his waves of dark hair.

                Rey didn’t bother scooting over knowing full well the pilot would seat himself beside Finn. Sure enough, Finn slid aside and Poe lowered his tray down before plopping into the offered seat. “Yes. I’m looking forward to it. I was telling Finn that I would love some fresh air. Some off-planet fresh air,” she reiterated.

                “Some non-sandy fresh air,” Finn informed Poe who glanced at him and smiled widely.

                “You must get over your loathing of Jakku,” Rey advised. “Jakku has done nothing to you-“

                “Jakku literally tried to swallow me into its bowels when I went looking for Poe after we crashed. The only good thing to come out of Jakku was you, Rey. Now let us never speak of that planet again.” And with that Finn turned his complete attention back to his breakfast.

                Poe turned and caught her eye, his lips quirking as they shared a grin. But a second later he also began to eat, leaving Rey to gaze at them both with a softening smile.

                If anyone was to ever heal Finn completely, it would be the man sitting beside him.

                And with that, she began to eat her meal as well.

 

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Two: **

Even if she couldn’t see him, she was able to feel him. She would always be able to feel him, something told her, whispering in her ear.

 

 


	3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two:

 

                The supply run had gone as planned and upon her return, Rey stood by to help the personnel unload the cargo ship. By the time they had finished, it was well past her usual bedtime and she took the lift down a floor to her level. She had been perfectly fine with being assigned a room deep within the base but the General had preferred she take one of the empty rooms on the level immediately beneath the aboveground hangar bays. All of the exterior rooms had portholes etched into their ceilings and, with the trees providing cover overhead, were not likely to be discovered in the case of unwanted visitors.

                “You should be able to see the stars, and see how far you’ve come,” Leia had said to her when she had showed her to her new quarters.

                This new base was on Takodana. After Maz’s castle had been attacked and torn apart, everyone had fled the planet and word had spread throughout the galaxy that business was shut down but would inevitably pick up elsewhere. That had been six months earlier. Maz Kanata herself had gone off, no doubt to start up business once more, but with mystifying parting words to Rey.

                _“Do not be afraid of what you do not understand. Nor should you be satisfied with what you believe you know. Nothing is ever fully written.”_

Rey still didn’t have the vaguest notion of what she had referred to.

                An admiral with the Resistance had mentioned rumors of an old facility deep within the forests of Takodana, a base he had come across in reports years before. With the destruction of Hosnian Prime, the capital of the New Republic, had come an influx of new blood, of young men and women wanting and willing to join the ranks of the Resistance; meaning in the face of adversity, Rey had assumed. The flood of new recruits had forced the Resistance to split their numbers; half had remained on D’Qar at the Resistance Headquarters as the other half had made the move to the abandoned facility under the woods and terrain of Takodana. Both bases had taken on the new recruits to train and house.

                It was Takodana that Rey now called home as did General Organa. 

                Swiping her hand at the console to her quarters, she slipped through the swishing doors into semi-darkness, the brilliant corridor lights illuminating her room only for the moment. As the doors slid closed behind her, she was tossed back into blackness until her eyes became accustomed. And then she was surrounded by shadows and the very pale rays of moonlight that drifted through the portholes in her ceiling and cast her room in soft blue.

                Her bed was calling, situated to the corner of her large room on her left but her eyes drifted to the small refresher at the adjacent corner. She had fallen in love with water showers at the Resistance base on D’Qar but this new base had limited resources which were why the supply runs were constantly required. With a sigh, she settled on a sonic shower, heading toward the refresher wearily.

                Finishing up a few minutes later, she finally trudged to her bed and collapsed into it face down, legs half hanging off the foot of her bed, falling asleep within moments.

 

                He was in her room.

                Stretched out on her stomach across her bed, her eyes came open, seeing darkness. But she knew. She felt it, felt _him_. She blinked, still seeing only blackness and she strained in the silence at having one sense useless to her then. Even if she couldn’t see him, she was able to feel him. She would always be able to feel him, something told her, whispering in her ear.

                There was movement, slight. And this time she felt the smallest spike of adrenaline in her form and she bent an arm under her, pushing up abruptly off the surface of her bed as she searched the opposite side of her room, her legs reflexively bending in and off the edge of her bed.

                She hadn’t let her vision become accustomed to the dark; she saw only blackness around her still, the light from her ceiling portholes coming in pale, weak.

                Then the shift came again, upsetting the balance in her quarters. Only it came from behind. Immediately, she spun onto her rear across her bed, the other hand now supporting her as she looked toward the room beyond the foot of her bed.

                Very faint light came in through the porthole above that corner; moonlight, but still much too dim. But there was enough light that she caught his silhouette as he stood just off the edge of her bed. Wide shoulders, long arms clenched into fists. A broad chest that tapered into a lean torso.

                She recognized that frame, she _knew_ it.

                And she felt in the shared darkness that he didn’t want to be there, in her room, in her dream. But as she stared, his shoulders lifted in a deep breath and then fell. Resigned, somehow.

                She breathed for what seemed to be years, years of merely watching him, wondering whether he would continue to stand beneath her window for the entirety of the night or would make a gesture, some kind of move. 

                He seemed content to stay exactly where he was, it seemed.

                “W-who…who are you?” she asked tremulously, her heart pounding so loudly she was sure that he could hear it in the silence between them.

                He didn’t respond, his hand releasing from the fist momentarily before squeezing once more, even more tightly.

                “Who are you?” she demanded now, her voice pitching higher. Her alarm was slowly turning into fear. He was not one of them, she understood then. All those times she had gone looking through the halls of the Resistance base had been for nothing. He was not one of their ranks, of their force, and she only hoped that she would remember that piece of information when she woke up.

                But she _knew_ him.

                As she stared at him, he finally took a step forward, his lean frame shifting in the soft light. She waited, her breath tempering, her eyes following his movements. He took another step and now she caught the outline of his head better, of his hair; long, waving and soft. Thick, if she were to run her fingers through it.

                She swallowed unwillingly, drawing her legs further into herself as he took another step.

                He came to the edge of her bed and she saw now that there was barely anything separating them except her curled legs, that had they not been in his path he would have been on top of her.

                Craning her head to see around her knees, her eyes dropped low to the darkness that she registered as his legs, though it was all just a waterfall of black, before lifting back to his face. “Who are you?” she asked again, this time in a whisper.

                His fist loosened, fingers coming open as he sidestepped her question, and she felt his eyes as they bore into her. He was fixed on her, looking at every part of her, and she felt the urge to crawl into herself to hide.

                “Who are you?” she asked one last time, nearly soundlessly.

                This time, at her almost inaudible query, his hand lifted. The movement was slow, very much hesitant.

                He didn’t want to be anywhere near her, she felt in the moment. He hated her. He _loathed_ her.

                His palm floated over the corner of her lips, hovering, and she felt the sudden heat of him, the reflection of her breath as she began to breathe hard. Then his hand settled against the side of her face and she closed her eyes, her body shuddering at his touch. His skin was smooth, leathery, and she realized in the next moment that he wore a glove, that the surface caressing her face was even but inhuman. His thumb skimmed over the bone of her cheek, fingers curling into the curve of her jaw, and then his thumb was sliding down. The gesture was tentative, almost unwilling. But then it was trailing toward her mouth, was pulling at her skin forcibly as he dragged the pad across her bottom lip.

                She panted as he caressed her, as his thumb grazed the most sensitive part of her face. And she felt her lips part, her breath catching as his thumb pressed into the flesh of her bottom lip, as it looped up to push into her top lip, nudging at the tip of an exposed canine before dipping in between her teeth.

                The taste of him was unfamiliar; the leather against her mouth, against the tip of her tongue. She didn’t recognize the feel of him but she felt in the moment that he could stimulate every part of her and would do it _well_ , that he could have her crying out an unfamiliar name willingly if he continued his assault. She breathed hoarsely against his hand, her chest heaving, her heart racing as he drew back from her tongue to press the imprint of her wetness against her bottom lip.

                A soft sigh left her at the gesture and the sound brought her visitor to hesitate, brought him to draw the wet tip of his thumb back only to press the flat pad of it against her lip once more.

                He hated her but he was taken by her. She saw that now, read it in his frame as he hesitated and then pulsed in the stillness; he wanted nothing to do with her, was in fact fighting this entire exchange, but he was drawn to her in a primal sense. And she waited, her mouth open to him, her body responding in the way that it did when she had awoken a few nights confused at the dreamy feel of a stranger’s hand on her but realizing that it was normal to feel the way she had, to discover her sexuality. This was nothing new but it was different in that he was familiar to her as if he had come to her before, had already tasted her and brought her to throb under his touch.

                She panted against his hand and raised her eyes to the darkness that was his face, her chest rising and falling heavily.

                He seemed to breathe with her, his silhouette vibrating in the dim light. And just as he straightened, as he seemed to bend toward her, she was snapping to and coming awake.

 

                Her room was still dark and she continued to face the other side of her room but as she awoke she found her lips to be wet, sensitive, as if they had been stroked. She closed her eyes, breathing in deeply along her bed.

                She wasn’t going to survive these dreams.

 

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Three: **

Then, snapping fully awake, she sat up in bed and smiled.

Luke Skywalker was here.


	4. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooo I realized fairly early on that I was writing Luke Skywalker in a completely different way than he will be in TLJ. Heh. My bad. *facepalms* But hope you guys enjoy the chapter and my take on him still!

Chapter Three:

 

                There was a lightness in the air, in the sun streaming in through the small portholes along the ceiling of her room as she came awake again. Blinking, she turned her head along her pillow and frowned. She could feel the undercurrent of happiness, of laughter, and for a moment she didn’t understand how she could recognize it when she was alone.

                Then, snapping fully awake, she sat up in bed and smiled.

                Luke Skywalker was here.

                Flinging off her bedcovers, she hurried through her morning routine, dressing in her beige and whites, and raced from her quarters a mere five minutes later.

                Even the crew and Resistance members in the hallway were buoyantly alive, sending greetings as she raced past them toward the lift. She still had barely any control over the Force; the fleeting whispers and hum that had awoken within her on the ice planet when she had confronted Kylo Ren had all but vanished, except when in the presence of the General’s brother. When he was near, it almost seemed as if he awakened the Force within her as well. It was in those moments that she could almost clearly remember what it had felt like to wield the Force, to be at one with Luke’s lightsaber. She had felt alive for the first time; no longer living to survive but just _living_. Even as she tossed herself into the lift, she felt her skin buzzing. Like magic, she thought almost dreamily as she selected the lower levels where this base’s command center resided. He brought everything to life when he came, especially the hopes of the people on the base. With him here, the hope, the mere thought of the Jedi was not dead. Even if he was the last, he still inspired the belief that they could come again.

                Especially with her on the base as well.

                She exited the lift and ran down the long corridors, heading toward the main room of operations.

                Standing before a large glowing holo-map of the galaxy focused on the planet D’Qar, General Leia Organa stood beside her brother, arms folded across her chest, deep in conversation. Luke wore his usual garb of dusty brown with the lighter cloak over his shoulders, the hood lowered across his back. Even if the siblings considered their talk private, all eyes were on them, personnel scooting past just near enough to catch a close up look at the twins but not enough to disturb the conversation.

                “Luke,” Rey said, her chest rising and falling sharply with her spent breath. And then, catching herself, she reiterated, “Master Luke.”

                The siblings turned to face her as she spoke. The General’s face easily softened at catching sight of her, her arms falling away from her chest to hang at her sides, one hand trailing the holo console.

                Luke’s wizened face also gentled and he left his sister’s side to near. “Rey. How are you?”

                “I knew you were here,” she said by way of response, excitement rising within. “I could sense it in the air, in the base around me. I knew you were here.”

                A small smile lifted the edges of the old Jedi’s mouth. “I knew you were here as well,” he said impishly and he leaned in close to whisper furtively, “You were asleep.”

                Rey’s smile turned wry. “It _is_ morning,” she pointed out.

                “But you were still asleep,” he argued good-naturedly.

                She acquiesced. “I was, admittedly.” And she could barely stop herself from wanting to jump up and down. “How long are you here for? Will you have a moment for me?” she asked, rapid-fire.

                Luke nodded. “I will have many moments for you. I will be here for the next few days. Have you been practicing the things I’ve shown you?” he inquired.

                “I have,” she replied instantly. Then her excitement fell slightly. “Though it’s harder when you’re not here. The results don’t come as steadily.”

                “Ah,” Luke murmured, and as she searched his face for a reason as to why, he merely lifted a hand and tapped his index finger to the right of her chest, just below the nexus where her collarbones meant. “That’s all in here though, I’m afraid. It’s here and in here.” And he lifted his finger to her temple.

                Rey nodded. “You’re right, of course,” she murmured and she dropped her head, his hand falling away to settle back at his side. “Will you…will you still come find me when you have a moment?”

                He nodded swiftly. “I will,” he replied and then added, “Leave the lightsaber. We won’t have need of it.”

                Rey felt disappointment inside at his words. She wasn’t good enough yet, not enough to begin to master the weapon. “I will,” she echoed him in a murmur, her earlier excitement dimming a bit. “I don’t have to make any runs today and I have no practice sessions either so I will be ready whenever you are.”

                Luke nodded, his light eyes resting on her face. “I will come for you,” he said in his gravelly tone.

                Rey returned the nod to him and then sent one to the General as well. “Forgive my interruption.” And with a last, tight smile to Luke, she turned and doubled back the way she had come, her steps heavier than when she had practically skipped down to the lower levels of the base.

 

                It was hours later that he found her deep within the aboveground hangar bays of the base.

                She had many spots on this new Resistance base where she hid herself away; out in the woods, in her room, in the med labs even though Finn had long since recovered enough to be moved out. She’d spent so much time there, in fact, that the med droids had taken to shooing her out whenever they encountered her sitting in a corner, quietly meditating. The med labs had brought her a certain peace and she attributed it to the silence and the calm she had felt when she had taken up vigil beside Finn’s bacta tank, her fingers skimming the edges lazily as she had told his unconscious figure within about her day.

                The dark shadowed corner of one particular hangar bay was her favorite spot. A systems console stood hidden behind a jutting edge of the wall and the room afforded her was enough to fit her slender frame within. Plus, heat rose from the working computers at her back behind the metal sheet of the access panel, and it kept her warm if the breeze grew cool.

                Sitting and meditating, she had found that stream of silvery whispers within herself and she had expanded her senses in their midst. With the Force so close to her, she felt Luke as soon as he stepped out of the lift onto the floor of the hangar bay. The mechanics and pilots on the level fell into a hush and a small murmur rose in the ensuing silence. But even without the hint in the air and noise around her, Luke glowed like a beacon in her head now, pulsing brilliantly in a world that was pale in comparison.

                Upon first meeting him on Ahch-To, she had distinctly felt him on the island, even with her novice Force abilities, and she had also immediately felt his resistance in wishing to train her. She had spent days and days on the island with him basically making a nuisance of herself before they had sat down to have their first actual conversation. He hadn’t made it easy for her at all and it wasn’t until she had been able to fully explain to him everything that had transpired that he had left her to meditate on his response.

                Within two days of hearing her story and hours more of silence, he had come to the doors of the Millennium Falcon and announced that he would return with her.

                His reunion with Chewbacca had been strained with Han Solo gone, his reunion with Leia even more so.

                “May I join you?” he asked now, his shadow suddenly falling on her.

                Opening her eyes, she blinked up at him and smiled slightly when she saw his own soft smile. “Of course,” she said and she scooted out of her small niche, nearing.

                With a heavy breath, Luke lowered himself to the floor, sitting opposite her and crossing his legs to mirror her. “You were disappointed when I asked you to leave the lightsaber today,” he remarked knowingly.

                Rey managed to hide the grimace though she did feel her cheeks lift slightly. “Did you read my mind?”

                He laughed quietly at that and shifted around to loosen his hooded cloak from under his rear, his smile peeking out through his heavy beard. “No, I didn’t need to. Your face said it well enough, you saved me the trouble.”

                Sighing, she bowed her head in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I just…want to be better at this. At all of it.”

                He nodded sagely at her. “I’m quite aware. Just as you’re aware that mastering anything can take years.”

                Frowning, she nodded as well, beginning to pick at the fabric of her trousers distractedly. She would need to replace her clothes soon. “But I have to be prepared. I have to…be _better_ than I am now. These last six months…the Republic was crushed as was the First Order. We’re all scrambling to rebuild and what if they make it first? What if I hold us back by not being good enough to be of any help?”

                He seemed sympathetic as he murmured her name. “Rey.” But then, seeing something on her face, in her eyes, Luke tilted his head slightly, hesitating. “Ask what you really wish to ask, Rey.”

                His words rewarded him when she looked at him quickly. And she knew better than to beat around the bush as he lifted his eyebrows curiously. The old Jedi could very well rip the thought right from her head if he had been so inclined. He was just not the sort.

                “When…” she began haltingly. “When I fought… _him_ …”

                Luke’s expression did not change at the mention of his nephew.

                “When I fought him…at first, I couldn’t hold my own. I spent more time running than actually fighting. I was using everything I knew, everything I had ever learned by myself growing up. I felt nothing, just myself, my fear,” she said slowly.

                He nodded that he understood, his silence prompting her to continue.

                “But at one point, he told me that I needed a teacher, that he could show me the ways of the Force,” she murmured. “And something happened there in that moment, half hanging off the cliff. I felt something and I don’t know what it was. But I think it was the Force.”

                A quick smile appeared on Luke’s face before it vanished. “What did it feel like?” he asked.

                She blinked at the question, her eyes darting sideways as she put herself back there that day; her arms had grown weary from wielding the lightsaber, especially against Kylo Ren’s massive strength. She’d had no footing at the edge of that cliff and she had been afraid to move, afraid to even breathe deeply. Every breath she had taken had been short and strained with snow and cold. He had been taller, broad and menacing, and if not for Luke’s lightsaber, he would have cut her down and literally torn her apart.

               But in that moment between his offer and her revival, she had felt… _everything_. The woods around her, the whisper of the world as it moved, as it had broken apart from the inside out. The cold air and the rush of her blood.

                The pounding of Kylo Ren’s blood and his scent in the heat pouring from his skin at such close proximity, of woods and metal.

                “Everything,” she whispered in confusion. “It felt like everything, all at once.”

                Luke’s smile returned slightly and he nodded almost imperceptibly.

                “But him,” she uttered, her voice falling away distantly. “I felt him most of all.”

                And just like that, the smile was gone again. In its place was the beginning of a frown, an expression crossing his face that Rey didn’t like. “You felt him?” he asked hesitantly.

                She nodded. “In that moment, I felt him. He was everywhere around me. I could hear things, whispers, and it was his voice but it wasn’t. I could hear his heartbeat. I could smell him, his blood. Heat and cold. And then it was like he was in my head. Or I was in his. I…I felt such anger that I-“

                That she had almost killed him before the dying planet had taken him instead.

                He had been in every part of her after she had begun to fight back. It was as if she had suddenly gained insight into everything she had done wrong earlier in their snow battle, as if she was witnessing all her mistakes through his eyes and could see then how to rectify them. She had gained the upper hand on him, had taken advantage of his wounds and weakening form, and had bested him.

                And then she had felt his darkness and had almost allowed it to cloud her mind and take over. She had rounded his broken figure in the snow and had felt the burning heat of rage, had almost relished seeing him bleeding in the white landscape.

                Luke was staring at her intently, his face blank.

                “I almost killed him,” she whispered painfully. And she leaned forward, suddenly desperate. “I almost killed him. If the planet hadn’t separated us, I think I might have done it.”

                He sat silently for a long moment. “You felt…darkness.”

                She stared at him long enough that her vision strained and became blurred at the edges. “Yes,” she uttered and her heart plummeted into the pit of her stomach.

                He nodded. “Have you felt the darkness since?”

                Rey slowly sat back on her rear. “No. No, I haven’t. I haven’t felt it since he died. It was…only for those moments and when he died, they went with him. It was just…over.”

                “When he-“ Luke echoed in confusion for a second before abruptly breaking off and merely staring at her.

                If he waited for her to say more, she disappointed him when she settled into silence, returning the stare awkwardly.

                He tilted his head, regarding her. “But you feel it still at times, don’t you.” And it wasn’t a question. As she frowned, he said, “You…dream of it.”

                Recoiling, Rey blinked and then glared at him. “That’s private,” she said to him firmly. “I don’t share the dreams with anyone-“

                “But the anger you feel in your dreams, it is not your anger. It belongs to another,” Luke murmured, seeming to slip away distractedly even as she continued to feel troubled.

                “It belongs to a man in my dreams,” she stated.

                “Or it could be that you have separated your anger into another form, one apart from yourself. One known to hold such fury and resentment that you would easily manifest him as a representation,” he said, his eyes falling to the floor as he mused. “To put distance between yourself and your anger, to displace it.”

                No. That wasn’t possible. She shook her head as he spoke, shaking it rougher when he continued. She would not do that to herself, would never make herself continue to carry anger like that. It had happened once, only once, when she had been so close to the knight that she had felt like an extension of him. For those cursed moments in their battle, she had felt everything as him and she had wondered for a long time after if he had felt everything through her, if he had seen things in her, of her, that she had never shown anyone.

                If he had seen her light and detested her the way she had detested him for his darkness.

                _“I see it. I see the island.”_

                She closed her eyes, grimacing, shoving his words and his voice away. No. The person in her dreams, he was angry always, yes. But her dreams of him were something else as well, something…

                Something she couldn’t tell Luke about. Ever. And if Luke was insinuating anything, it was that her anger had manifested itself as Kylo Ren in her dreams because it was the only thing she could see that could embody such anger, turning those strange lucid dreams into nightmares merely because of who he had been.

                And she would never feel such desire and need for that monster. It was good that he was gone.

                By the Force, she would soon need a psychiatrist as much as Finn did.

                “Instead,” Luke was saying, waving aside the subject at hand, “Perhaps we can start today on a lighter note. The past is the past.”

                Rey looked at him, hopeful.

                “Your meditation is coming along well. Let’s start today’s training with focusing the Force, willing it to move through you to then manipulate objects outside of yourself.”

                She blinked. “Telekinesis. You’re saying telekinesis,” she stated breathlessly, leaning forward slightly to stare at him.

                “Yes,” he said slowly. “I suppose I-“

                Pure happiness ripped through Rey so suddenly that she almost threw herself into Luke’s arms. “Yes! Yes! Let’s start with that today!”

                Chuckling quietly, Luke nodded. “Very well. Come with me to the woods then. We will attempt small items and go from there.”

                “Okay,” Rey said, nodding eagerly and scrambling to her feet.

                It took a bit longer for Luke to rise but by the time he had accomplished the task, she had already run off ahead of him down the landing strip and towards the woods.

 

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Four: **

She suddenly understood what it was to yearn for something in the darkness. To know that meeting a stranger in the black wood, where they could do things to each other that they would never have done in the daylight to anyone, was perfectly well and good. Necessary, even.


	5. Chapter Four

Chapter Four:

 

                It had been a week that Luke had remained at the base, far longer than most of his other visits. Every day had been spent practicing telekinesis though they had reverted to meditation by the end of their trainings, as attempting to move and levitate items left Rey tired.

                How had she done it before?

                By the time evening had come on the last day, he had dismissed her earlier than usual and had suggested she eat dinner to recoup, waving her along as he was wont to do at times. She wondered then if he did it because he was flagging himself or if he had other pressing matters to attend to. She was no one to question his methods, and so she had returned to her room to shower and change.

                The training had been a positive one, though. While it left her exhausted by the end, she had succeeded in moving smaller items and carefully advancing toward larger objects. Luke had been adamant; slowly, gently. Introspectively.

                _The Force works through you, it does not work outside of you._

                Finishing up and feeling better after the long day, Rey considered meeting up with Finn and Poe though she did look toward her bed longingly. Then her stomach let out an angry rumble and her decision was made.

                Encountering the pair in the mess hall for dinner, they invited her to join them out in the Takodana woods for a bonfire.

                “Are you sure a bonfire in the woods in the night is the best idea?” she questioned sarcastically.

                “Well, we can’t have a bonfire _in_ the Resistance base. We’ll set off the fire suppression systems,” Finn stated as if she should have understood that herself.

                Even with the banter, she debated turning the offer down as it seemed like their original plan was to go alone, just the two of them, and she didn’t want to intrude. But when she mentioned it, Finn promptly blushed, reddening along his dark cheeks, and Poe cast him an easy grin before reassuring her that she was more than welcome to join them.

                And so, she accepted.

 

                The evening had passed into night and the fire still burned though it was small now, the flames licking the remaining kindle and twigs gently. She had stretched out along the hard-packed earth and had watched the flames until they had blurred before her tired eyes, as they had become a dancing blob of red and gold. The fire was their only warmth and she was not cold then as she looked toward Finn and Poe sleepily. Earlier, she had been half frozen over, demanding that they keep her hands warm and then slyly suggesting they keep each other warm before drawing closer to the fire.

                The silence that had ensued behind her had almost been broken by her own mischievous giggles.

                They sat huddled together now, Poe having moved closer to the former stormtrooper once she had begun to grow obviously weary, the two of them conversing quietly. Comfortably. She found her heart warming gently as she watched them through sleepy eyelids, the corners of her lips twitching.

                Poe had been afraid when Chewbacca brought Finn’s broken and unconscious body home to the original Resistance headquarters. And now, having recovered, it seemed that Finn and Poe were no longer wasting time.

                Smiling slightly, Rey allowed her heavy eyelids to close. With the fire warming her and her friends’ voices comforting her, she slipped into a dark sleep.

 

                He was here.

               Rey looked over her shoulder as she came to a stop, her light eyes searching the woods for him. She didn’t know where she had been going, only that his sudden presence had halted her in her tracks.

                The moons were overhead, casting a silver glow on the branches and leaves, on the hard pitted wood of the trees’ trunks. She hesitated, looking into the deep blackness of shrubbery, at the shadows the trees threw across the earth. He was here, she could sense him. Her body could feel him. But she couldn’t see him.

                “Come out,” she called out.

                Her command went unheeded for a moment, her voice echoing in the stillness. Frowning, she turned to face the way she had come. She knew he was there. Very few places could afford him proper cover but still he avoided her stare, hiding himself away.

                “Come out,” she repeated and she took a step back along the path she had carved, the breeze gentle along her cheek and lips. “Please. Come out. I know you’re there.”

                The wood remained dark and silent for another moment still. And then a shadow pulled away from the dark side of a thick tree, tall and broad-shouldered. Him. That man that was somehow so familiar. That man that, she remembered yet again, could not possibly be anyone in the Resistance. How she wished she could hold onto that piece of information returning to the waking world.

                She straightened, her head lifting toward him curiously as she ran her gaze down his form.

                The shadow stood beside the tree still, hesitant. Unmoving.

                The awkwardness was almost more than she could take. “I knew you were there,” she called to him, her voice ringing out in the silent wood. “I felt you. Is that what you intended?”

                He did not reply though he did take a step forward, his movements slow and calculated.

                Rey watched him, studying his movements as he advanced. She recognized the gait, the deliberation with each gesture and step, the restrained _power_ behind them. She knew him from somewhere. She _knew_ him-

                As if reading her mind, the shadow came to a slow stop and stood, his own head lifting.

                The moons were overhead but at his back. She grimaced almost angrily. He had yet to show his face to her, always appearing as a silhouette. This was the first time he had ever appeared to her outside of her room on the Resistance base. Turning her head to scan the forest at her back, she vaguely remembered the fire Finn and Poe had set, the warmth she had drawn from it.

                _I’m still outside._

                The shadow took another step but now she felt the concentration in the air, how he also seemed to search the surrounding area. He was attempting to recognize the woods around them as if trying to place them.

                “This is Takodana,” she said to him. “Do you know it?”

                He stiffened at her words, his head lifting once more in a quick gesture to survey the woods.

                “You do know it,” she realized aloud, her body going numb out of fear. What had she just done, giving away the location of the Resistance base as if it was her secret to hand out?

                A moment later she pushed the thought, the _alarm_ , away. This was a dream and this man still did not exist in her real world. What did it matter if he knew where she called home now?

                As if he would ever come for her.

                “Have you been here before?” she asked slowly.

                The shadow didn’t respond, his head bowing for a long moment, silence falling between them. Rey watched him in confusion, searching the darkness of his form but seeing the same blackness as before. His silhouette was the same as her other dreams though he came through much clearer lately; his height, his wide shoulders, the powerful arms at his sides. The waves of his hair. She had long ago realized that he’d had curls to his head of hair and she had instantly wanted to know what they felt like under her fingers. Even then, her hands curled into fists at her side and she found herself taking a step forward gingerly, wanting to be closer to him.

                “Do I know you?” she asked him breathlessly, her words coming in a whisper. “I feel as if I do…but I can’t be certain.”

                He hesitated before slowly shaking his head.

                Rey recoiled slowly, regret slipping over her. “Oh. I see,” she murmured and she felt disappointment deep within for a moment. All of this time telling herself he didn’t exist, that if he did she would _know_ him, only to discover in the end that she didn’t know him at all. That she really had made him up, then.

                How strange that she would feel disheartened when she should have felt relief.

                Instead, she merely shrugged it off. “Well, then, it’s very nice to meet you, as it were.”

                The shadow drew back slightly at her words, seemingly surprised. But then, as she raised her eyes to him again, he took another step. He stood less than five feet away from her now and yet somehow still remained in shadow, his identity a mystery.

               It didn’t matter, she reflected then. He had no face, no identity, for he didn’t exist. A mishmash of people she had seen throughout her day, characteristics stolen from various men to create this shadow person before her.

                “I’m dreaming,” she revealed to the tall figure before her and she smiled faintly as she spoke. “I know I am. And I think I’m out here right now in this dream because I fell asleep out here in this wood, in the real world, with two of my friends. But it’s nice not to be alone. We can stay here together for a bit, just until I wake up-“

                And the words were barely out of her mouth before she felt that same feeling that she always felt around him; the rise of his overwhelming anger, the bitterness. The brimming rage.

                Rey started at the abrupt change, drawing backward reflexively.

                Was this her anger, her rage, brought to life in a person that did not exist?

                As if her gesture spurred him into action, he took the distance between them in two steps, suddenly coming to loom over her.

                Rey instinctively scrambled backward but his hand streaked out and he had hold of her wrist a moment later, yanking her toward him. She collided against him with a surprised gasp, immediately pulling at her arm even as she pushed against his chest for leverage. It felt as if she had a hard wall under her palm as she pulled, his hand a vise wrapped around her wrist. “What are you-“

                The shadow turned away and she found herself being dragged behind him a moment later. She automatically moved to resist, yanking at her wrist and digging her heels into the hard packed earth beneath her feet.

                He was much stronger than she had anticipated. Even as she fought, she was yanked along as he strode back the way he had come, moving deeper into the forest. Grimacing, she stumbled behind, attempting to halt him in his step, to pull his fingers open from their grip on her. It was a dream, she knew it was somewhere deep inside, but it was amazingly real in that moment and she had control of nothing somehow. “Stop,” she ordered him through gritted teeth, yanking at her wrist in his grasp, searching within for that whisper that she knew to be the Force. It failed to come though and she grimaced, now twisting her wrist in an attempt to break his hold on her. “Stop-“

                He pushed deeper into the woods and suddenly it was dark all around, the moons hidden overhead by the canopy of trees and gnarled limbs, of heavy green leaves.

                _I didn’t know there was this much green in the whole galaxy._

                Abruptly, he took a sharp turn, pulling her roughly and forcing her backward into the hard bark of a tree. She practically tripped over shrubbery as he shoved her but as she collided with the trunk, she could only cough out a breath of surprise at his strength.

                He was before her a moment later, his tall frame near enough that he was all she breathed in. She found her eyes closing instinctively at finding him so close, at scenting him on the soft breath of air between them, hearing his pulse beat so clearly in the silence that she couldn’t understand then how he _wasn’t_ real. He smelled of the woods but softer, of cedar and moonless night. Even in her dreams she recognized the smell of him and the slight throb of impacting against the tree robbed her of everything except his scent, his hands as they took hold of both of her wrists now, and his warmth as he neared even more.

                “What are you doing?” she asked dimly, hazily. “What are you-“

                His hands pushed her arms into the bark behind her frame and held them there for a long moment, tightening his grip slightly.

                He wanted her to keep her hands on the trunk.

                Opening her eyes, she looked up at him in cloudy confusion but he was a mere shadow with peeks of moonlight casting a halo along his curls and painting the waves silver. She shook her head at him, willing him to see that she didn’t understand what he wanted or needed of her, why he was so angry with her. But then he released her wrists and his hands trailed up the inside of her arms slowly, fingertips sliding along that tender flesh and her words slipped away, her lips parting.

                Tilting his head slightly, he traced the curve of her arms and slid his hands up toward her neck, a warm touch and a burning heat as he bent toward her. His shoulders rose slightly and she realized that he was breathing her as well, taking her in and sighing against her. And then his hands cupped her jaw and face and she pressed her head back against the tree, her heart pounding soundlessly.

                He wore no gloves this time. When his thumb grazed her lip, it was skin that she felt, that she realized she wanted to taste on her tongue.

                He avoided the warmth of her mouth with his fingers though. Instead, with almost trembling hands but with a hard grip still, he dug his fingers into her hair and tightened, bringing her to make a soft sound in the quiet of the forest. He bent just enough that she felt him close, felt his mouth hovering near, his breath warming her cheek.

                She turned her head slightly, fighting the harsh grip he had on her hair and head, and arched that little bit.

                Almost carelessly, he eluded her mouth as she reached but his hands left her hair, his body keeping her pinned against the tree. And she murmured softly, incoherently, as his hands fell to her neck, slipped low to trail heavily over her breasts.

                Rey swallowed at his touch, at the heat of his hands as she felt arousal rise within. Her body reacted all on its own, leaning forward into his palms, her head pushing back into the tree trunk.

                There was something illicit in his touch, in the act of desire in the shadows just beyond the reach of the light. Craving in silence where no one could hear, where no one could see what transpired in the night-

                She suddenly understood what it was to yearn for something in the darkness. To know that meeting a stranger in the black wood, where they could do things to each other that they would never have done in the daylight to anyone, was perfectly well and good. Necessary, even.

                Her fingers dug into the wood at her sides, pain flashing as she almost bent a nail back with her grip. The sting was offset by desire, her heart racing, her chest pushing into his hands as he cupped her, as he finally lowered his mouth to the pulse throbbing in her neck. His breath was hot, his shoulder pushing into her jaw as she turned her head to give him access, her eyelashes fluttering as he tasted her skin slightly, tongue flicking. And at her soft sigh he parted his lips and kissed her fully, almost biting into her neck to have more of a taste. Her hand flew off the wood to clamp down on his wrist, beginning to heave under his mouth and under his caress as he dragged his hands over her breasts and then down to squeeze her ribs and waist. Her other hand came off the trunk and collided with his jaw almost in a slap, tightening and holding onto the hard edge of it as he trailed his lips along her neck hungrily.

                Her thumb slipped down his smooth cheek for a moment before encountering a thin line of a different texture beneath his cheekbone.

                Rey frowned slightly, barely registering the broken skin there, the slender curve of a deep line etched into his face as she trailed a fingertip along its path. It arced low along the skin of his cheek and jaw, her finger tracing it as if she could read braille.

                Stiffening, the shadow under her hands slowed and then stopped completely.

                She didn’t want him to stop. She wanted his hands all over her, wanted his mouth to continue its path back down her neck to caress that small spot that she hadn’t even realized was a sensitive area until he had begun to come to her. She wanted to hide in this wood with him until she had to awaken the next morning, until he’d had his way with her and had spent himself on her.

                How strange that her own anger could show her such particular delights.

                But instead, he slowly curled his hands away from her, pulling them back as he straightened. His face left her palm, her fingers still reaching for him blindly, and he carefully drew away from her until there was that small space between their bodies, their breaths misting between them.

                Rey breathed shallowly, her chest rising and falling from the need of his touch. “Don’t-” she practically begged of him.

                A second later, his anger erupted, whole and violent, and he suddenly swung viciously at the tree trunk over her head, his fist smashing into the hard surface ferociously.

                Rey flinched away with a cry, her heart jumping into her mouth at his rage.

                He did it again, his fist colliding with a muffled thump as he growled in the night, as his entire body tensed in the moonlight.

                “Stop! _Stop!_ You’re hurting yourself-” she shouted, her hands flying to her ears to stifle the sound as she ducked out from beneath him and scrambled away.

                But as he settled into heaving silence, his fist falling back to his side, he merely shook his head. At himself, she realized as she watched him, as he bowed his head to his chest and breathed in a hiss.

                Then, as suddenly as he had begun to assault the tree, he turned away and stormed off back into the thicket, disappearing around the bend and vanishing into the wood.

                “Wait!” Rey called after him, a hand streaking out to follow him though she couldn’t seem to move her legs to carry her away from where she stood on trembling legs. _“Wait-“_

 

                _“Wait!”_

                Rey snapped awake, her body sitting up in a fluid movement, her heart beating in her ears and slamming in her chest.

                The fire was mere embers now before her as she stared at it foggily. To the side she registered a sudden movement in the darkness causing her to recoil and scamper away on her rear in alarm.

                “Hey! Hey! Rey! It’s me! It’s us!” came Poe’s voice and he appeared at her side, reaching a hand out toward her gingerly as if he approached a wild animal, his face barely lit by the remaining flames. “Hey!”

               Rey stared at him, recognizing him in the moonlit night, and a moment later Finn appeared at his shoulder, looking down at her in concern. Gasping, she could only search their familiar faces for a second before finally beginning to calm. “Finn. Poe-”

                “Yeah,” Poe half chuckled, a quick smile quirking his lips as he crouched slowly before her. “Yeah, it’s us. You okay?”

                She blinked rapidly, her breathing beginning to slow at last. “Yeah,” she uttered breathlessly and then again, swallowing and forcing a stronger response. “Yeah. Yes. I’m okay. I’m okay. I just…”

                Poe’s hand came to rest on her shoulder and the warmth of his palm was an instant comfort, her eyes closing as he gripped her carefully and then shook her good-naturedly. “You’re with us. You’re safe. We just let you nap for a little. We were about to get you up to go back to the base.”

                Rey’s hand darted up mindlessly to grasp Poe’s hand, latching on desperately, and she nodded again, slowly recovering. “Yes. Yes, we should…we should go back to the base.” And then, in a tremulous voice, she murmured, “please.”

                Poe frowned at her breathlessness and he turned his head to send Finn a quick, pointed look before returning to her and nodding as well. “Okay, no problem. Come on, we’ll head back now.”

                Feeling suddenly foolish at how they seemed to worry about her, Rey could only let him help her to her feet. Even standing, her legs trembled slightly and she ducked her head away in embarrassment though Poe acted as if he hadn’t noticed, his hands warm and so very solid and dependable.

                Behind them, Finn stomped out the dying embers and tossed dirt to smother what was left before bringing up the rear and then, as a group, the three of them made their way back to the Resistance base, Finn and Poe conversing casually over her, prodding her at times to join their light conversation.

                It didn’t help her feel much better but she appreciated the effort all the same.

 

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Five: **

Besides, when it came to Kylo Ren, there was no longer anything to worry about.

He was dead, after all.


	6. Chapter Five

Chapter Five:

 

                She had woken up the next morning restless.

                Luke Skywalker had left in the early morning hours. She had felt the change in the air immediately; though still very polite and welcoming, the people of the Resistance were gloomy again, the hallways back to their usual silence or barely ringing with muted whispers and conversations.

                She had skipped breakfast which had immediately caused Finn and Poe to exchange a look and prompted Finn to carefully ask if she was feeling well. Replaying the scene in her head brought a small smile to her face. She skipped one meal and something had to be wrong.

                Well. The way she had been eating lately, consuming everything edible on the base, it could have served as a surprise, she supposed.

                Traversing the hallways, she entered the lift and selected the main floor overhead. The portholes in her room had revealed a clear morning outside and she wished to experience it.

                As she came out onto the hangar bay, she waved hello to several of the pilots she recognized from Poe’s piloting courses, spotting his X-Wing being refueled over to the right. It seemed they would be sending him out again if they were readying his ship. She wondered momentarily where he would be heading off to this time but as he hadn’t mentioned anything when she had seen them for breakfast, she assumed it wasn’t anywhere dangerous.

                Walking to the edge of the landing strip, she stepped off onto dirt and then grass ahead. The woods of Takodana had a certain scent to them and she inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with it.

                Her dreams the night before had been uneventful after the one that she’d had by the fire with Finn and Poe. Her dream man hadn’t made a reappearance and she wondered if maybe that was why she was feeling the way she did; restless, fidgety, apprehensive. She couldn’t be sure but she had been feeling this way more and more in the last few months. She assumed it was because she had been worried about Finn in the beginning, had feared that Luke would not be welcoming to her or willing to show her the ways of the Force-

                _“I can show you the ways of the Force!”_

                She stumbled a bit as the words entered her mind suddenly, spoken in a hard shout.

                She hadn’t fully thought of him in a while, she mused, regaining her balance. After the battle on StarKiller, she’d been completely wrapped up in training with Luke, in submersing herself in the ways of the Resistance, in watching over Finn and somehow hoping to help him heal faster, to wield the Force to push his healing along. In the end, she had failed as Finn was only now really finishing up his physical therapy, his medical appointments once a week instead of daily.

                Besides, when it came to Kylo Ren, there was no longer anything to worry about.

                He was dead, after all.

                The First Order had been toppled at its foundation and had seemingly vanished away though there were murmurings sometimes, information brought back to the Resistance base, to the General and Captains, even the Admirals. But they were just whispers, rumors. None of the First Order had been seen since that day six months before when StarKiller had been destroyed along with its massive weapon.

                Granted, the Resistance had also taken a hit when the First Order had taken out Hosnian Prime and the surrounding planets, leaving them scattered and trying to regroup. But there was hope in the air now that Luke Skywalker had been found, now that he had come out of hiding and was traveling the galaxy again.

                There were whispers of the Jedi returning since he had been located.

                She wandered deeper into the woods, searching out her usual hiding spot when she wanted to be alone but didn’t want to stay on the base itself. She reached it within another minute and sighed deeply as she found the large, rounded boulder set down beside a tree and a patch of bushes. Moving to it, she braced her hands on the curves and pulled herself easily onto it, wiggling her rear around to get into a comfortable spot to meditate.

                She knew the story of Kylo Ren now, of Ben Solo. Of what he could have been if he hadn’t been consumed by the Dark Side. The General had barely spoken to her regarding her only child, and why would she have? Who was Rey to know anything beyond what everyone else knew or what was known of the Princess-turned-General’s history? It didn’t matter anyway.

                Though now that she gave it more consideration, Kylo Ren did greatly resemble the shadow in her dreams.

                The thought caused her stomach to go cold, a shiver racing down her entire body. She wasn’t following that train of thought again. They were just dreams, that’s all they were. He was dead and gone; there was no reason to fear that it would be him attempting to manipulate her even if it was him that she dreamt of. And why would she dream of him anyway? He had been a monster, through and through. She had no compassion for him; she barely even cared that he was dead, had barely given him a passing thought in months.

                “Good riddance,” she muttered, closing her eyes and preparing to finally meditate. All of Luke’s training so far and she felt she had almost nothing to show for it.

                “Good riddance to what?” came a soft, wry voice from behind.

                Jumping in surprise, Rey turned to look over her shoulder, a palm coming down to support her on the boulder. “General!” she gasped as she glanced down.

                Leia Organa Solo merely sent up a small smile to her, an impish sparkle in her eyes. “I have been called that, yes,” she stated and she stepped out from the patch of trees she had obviously come through, her steps slow but natural. “I have been called many things.”

                Spinning slightly to face the older woman as she rounded the boulder, Rey felt her heartbeat come back down to normal as she settled herself now to accept the company. “All good things, I’m sure,” she said quickly.

                The small smile on the woman’s face got just the slightest bit wider. “I guess it depends on who you’ve spoken to.”

                Rey shrugged easily. “Perhaps. What are you doing out here? I can’t say that I ever really see you outside of the base unless you’re traveling off planet.”

                Coming closer, the older woman looked around, seeming to observe the area surrounding them. “Needed some air. Felt like you needed some, too.”

                Rey’s eyebrows rose slightly, her lips parting.

                She had heard those stories as well; that the General was also Force Sensitive though she had never displayed any such abilities the way Luke had, the way Rey had.

                The way her dead son had.

                She had heard that Leia had felt the death of Han Solo across the galaxy, had felt her son fall fully to the Dark Side at last. Which Rey hadn’t exactly agreed with as she had been present at the time of the murder and she had seen the expression on Kylo Ren’s face when he hadn’t gotten the result he had expected with the death of his father.

                But what did she know when it came to this dynasty of Force Users.

                “I, ah, yes. I needed some air,” Rey scrambled to respond. “I feel…pent up? Like I have too much energy, like I’m aggravated?” She frowned down at the General, attempting to explain. “I keep trying to meditate but it’s not having the desired effect.”

                Leia nodded, her eyes slipping off further into the woods again. “Yes. It’s hovering around you like a cloud,” she replied. Pursing her lips slightly, she came forward another step, almost nonchalantly. “My son went through that quite a bit. Before.”

                Rey was sure the surprise on her face was both visible and palpable. “Y-your son?” she stuttered.

                The General cast a quick glance up at her that turned into a stare. “Kylo Ren?” she stated almost as if to remind her.

                Rey blinked rapidly and then shook her head sharply. “Yes. No. I mean, yes, I know who you were referring to. I’m just…surprised. To hear you mention him. At all.” She hesitated, uncertain whether to continue with her next thought. “You don’t…speak of your husband, either,” she said quietly, awkwardly.

                The General smiled once more though, her soft cheeks bunching up. “I barely spoke _to_ him, why would I speak _of_ him?” she asked impishly. “And if I did, it wouldn’t be highly.”

                A grin crossed Rey’s face and she dropped her head away, nodding. “I suppose,” she said as if it was just a secret passed from one girl to another and didn’t hold such a painful connotation.

                “But,” the General added slowly. “You know, Han really liked you.”

                Rey’s head snapped to look down at the General, her face straining at such wonderful, painful words.

                She had really liked him, too, gruff old man that he had been.

                “Thank you,” she whispered with a sideways smile, a small gesture before it disappeared in sudden grief. It had been a long time that she had allowed herself to think of Han Solo as well for when she did, the pain was more tangible than the good memories.

                A small silence fell between them before the General let out a bit of a sigh. “You know, up there like that, meditating. You did remind me of Ben.”

                Oh, no. Another chance to cry.

                “Did I?” she asked faintly and she ducked her head once more, wishing to ask and then going ahead with it. “How so?”

                The General frowned slightly, shrugging. “It just would’ve been something he would have done as a boy,” she answered and she motioned with a hand up at her, waving it over the boulder. “Found something just like that to crawl up on. Hiding himself away, disappearing when I least expected it. He was tall at a young age but he really sprang just before we sent him to Luke.”

                Before he had destroyed his uncle’s prized Jedi school and left nothing but bodies and ashes.

                “He could’ve probably just hopped up on that thing, he was so tall by then.” Leia paused. “Han said he saw him, here in these very woods before they came and took you. Told me a little later that he was even taller now.”

                Rey swallowed uncomfortably. “He is. Or was. Yes. He was tall.” She blinked, her eyes falling away along with her tone. “Intimidating. Scary.”

                The General nodded, lips tightening.

                “I’m sorry,” Rey added after a moment. “For your loss. Even though he wasn’t the person you remember, he was still your son.”

                Leia looked at her quickly, confusion seeming to pull at her brow. For a long silent spell, she merely stared at her quizzically.

                Rey felt herself shrink a little. Perhaps she shouldn’t have opened her mouth to say anything at all.

                Then the frown cleared away from the General’s face, blankness falling instead. “Thank you,” she replied courteously after another pause.

                Rey nodded, feeling as if she didn’t know what else she could do or say.

                Clasping her hands behind her back, the General lifted her head to the trees overhead, to the blue sky between branches, peeking through the canopy. “He…was strong. With the Force,” she murmured almost casually. “Even before he went with Luke, before he was even of age. I could hear him deep inside of me, his thoughts, his emotions.”

                Rey merely sat, listening.

                “You know what I mean,” Leia stated, nodding to her before returning her gaze to the sky. “It’s having the Force run through you, connecting you to nature, to the worlds around you. Connecting you to people.”

                Rey blinked and nodded slowly. “Yes…I know what you’re referring to. But lately it seems to…hide from me, that connection.”

                The General stood silent for a moment at her words. “You just need to remember how to tap into it,” she murmured almost distractedly. “It’s within you even now. You made the connection before when you touched Luke’s lightsaber. When you called it to you on StarKiller. When…he interrogated you.”

                Rey stiffened. She had told the General that upon her return from the destruction of StarKiller, how Kylo Ren had looked into her head and she had looked into his. How he had wanted the map to Luke Skywalker from her and instead had given her glimpses of his own fears.

                He had died in the end with those fears realized.

                “We make connections with people and sometimes they’re so light, so pale and thready, that you almost don’t realize they’re there until they’re gone,” Leia said and her eyes shifted, darting around the sky and the trees above.

                _Like with Han Solo._

                “And sometimes, those connections are so strong that they’re all you know. All you hear. All you feel,” Leia continued and her voice fell, lowered to a murmur. “That was my connection to my son, even before he was born. I could hear these sounds that were almost like thoughts, emotions. As a baby he had such moments of light. And then the light became dim, day by day just fading. We didn’t know what to do.”

                Rey knew where the story went next. “And so you sent him to train under his uncle.”

                The General nodded, her stare detached now as if seeing the past before her eyes then. “And so we sent him to train under Luke,” she echoed faintly. “Even training on another planet, I could feel him and he fell colder and more silent over time. I felt him distancing himself until all I could feel in the end was his life but not his heart.” She shook her head as if she didn’t understand. “My only son, the only thing that mattered, and I couldn’t reach him anymore.”

                Rey sighed silently, her shoulders falling as if she could feel the older woman’s burden. It didn’t matter any longer, she supposed, lifting her head to look out over the woods. He had no longer been Ben Solo. That boy had gone away a long time ago and he had never returned home.

                But in losing a husband and son, the General had gained her brother back. Her family wasn’t completely gone.

                “You’re strong with the Force,” Leia suddenly stated, lowering her head from the sky and the past to look up at her. The future. “Luke’s methods…they’re rusty since he had turned away from everything. But I see more and more of my brother in his eyes now. He is returning.”

                “Maybe he can return a little faster,” Rey remarked with a small smile. “My training is taking forever.”

                Leia’s lips tightened once more but this time into a smile as well. “It takes time. That’s why there was an academy,” she stated. “But…you’ll get there. And maybe it won’t be Luke that helps you accomplish it.”

                Rey arched a brow. “Who else could?” she asked before quickly adding, “Please don’t say me.”

                The General shrugged. “I won’t. I’m not sure that would be correct anyway.” And with a sigh, she turned away. “Be careful if you’re going to stay out here longer. Just because Maz’s castle and business are gone, doesn’t mean everyone in the galaxy has heard the news. You might still encounter a smuggler or two out here.”

                Rey nodded, casting another small smile at her though the General was already walking away.

                _Just not the smuggler we hoped to see again,_ she thought sadly before turning her head up to look at the sky.

 

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Six: **

Rey stared up at him in wide-eyed disbelief, recognizing the voice, seeing someone before her that she had never expected to see again even as he remained in shadow and unknown to her.

It couldn’t be him. He was dead.


	7. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where it gets Mature for some audiences/readers! Not fully explicit yet.

Chapter Six:

 

                Her room was pitch-black when her eyes came open. She thought perhaps a storm had come in the night hours but there was nothing outside her porthole windows except more darkness with very few stars to light anything. There was no moon in glimpse of the night sky afforded to her, nothing but more blackness.

                But she sensed that she was not alone and she slowly sat up on her side, her heart already pounding. She couldn’t see him but she felt his presence, the size and breadth of his body as it radiated some kind of heat.

                “You burn,” she said into the center of the bedroom aloud, clearly, hoping to convey calmness. “Like an inferno.”

                She realized a moment later why she could feel the heat of him. It was anger that he emitted, that he gave off from every pore of his body. Resentment? There was the taste of that in the air as well and she found her mask cracking slightly at that, a frown crossing her forehead.

                “As do you,” a deep voice came to her left and she turned her head, searching the blackness of her room intently, searching for _him_. It came again, that low murmur though now she was almost certain there was something else there in his tone, in the cadence. Something akin to reverence. “Like fire. A sun.”

                She blinked, her lips parting “You speak,” she stated more forcefully than she had meant to, her voice resounding throughout her room. Lowering it, she glared into the darkness. “Who are you?”

                Sounds came from where his voice had originated; the brush of heavy clothes, the scuff of a boot. An irritated exhalation of breath. “Always that question,” he murmured almost distractedly and he came into faint light, turning his face away from it as if it, too, would burn him.

                She stared at the waves of his hair, the dim light that painted the black locks silver, the hard slanted line of his cheekbone.

                “Am I so easily forgettable?” he asked her, his tone now expressionless.

                Perhaps he didn’t really wish for a response to his question. Rey had none for him as it was. All she knew then was that she had been correct; she _did_ know him, _did_ recognize him from somewhere.

                _He did exist._

                “I do know you, then,” she murmured, wishing she had more light to see by.

                He made a soft noise that sounded suspiciously like a huff. “Maybe not so forgettable after all.”

                Sitting up further, Rey drew her knees up, legs tucking in under her. “Why do you keep coming to me?” she asked quietly. “Why at night? If we know each other, why wouldn’t you come see me outside of these…these dreams? Why won’t you come to me in daylight-“

                He neared abruptly, half of his figure falling into starlight, his face still hidden away.

                He was massive. Rey broke off in midsentence as he came to hover directly before her and she recoiled at seeing the span of his shoulders and chest, his height; of being _reminded_. She knew him. She _knew_ him. And while she couldn’t remember from where, she felt the rapid rise of inexplicable panic inside as well, racing up her body in an icy streak. She could barely breathe suddenly, her jaw dropping open.

                “Because if I come to you, I will kill you in that daylight you speak of. I will tear you apart,” he whispered to her, his breath warm, his entire form giving off such heat that he almost burned her.

                Rey stared up at him in wide-eyed disbelief, recognizing the voice, seeing someone before her that she had never expected to see again even as he remained in shadow and unknown to her.

                It couldn’t be him. He was dead. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t him-

                His hand came up, pale skin, gloveless in the weak light.

                Rey took a hard breath and froze, trapping the air deep in her lungs and holding it as fear brought gooseflesh to her form.

                His hand hovered over her face, fingers close enough to her cheek that she felt the static of his body, the warmth of his skin. She stared fearfully into the blackness that was his home in her own bedroom, the wide expanse of him, how he hid her own world away in his very shadow.

                And then that palm lowered to her jaw, his hand coming to rest on her cheek, fingers gingerly curling around her ear and burying into her hair.

                He was hot; his skin, his body. Close enough that she stupidly felt that she would burn with him if he continued to touch her. But she couldn’t seem to find the strength to pull away from him even though the fear inside screamed at her to run. She swallowed painfully, eyes rising as he took one last step to hover at the edge of her bed, his palm cradling her face. She felt that he watched her, seemed to feel him search her features; her upturned brow, her light eyes, the small line of her nose.

                The curve of her lips.

                His other hand rose as well but she didn’t see it in the darkness until he had already grasped her other cheek, holding her face in his palms.

                “No more questions,” he whispered in the starlit darkness, a looming black form overhead now that he stood before her.

                And in that moment, his deep voice drove the fear away, lulled her into a strange sense of refuge. She could bury her face in his hands, into his hard chest and she would gladly float away in his darkness and warmth. “No more questions,” she echoed him dazedly, staring up into nothingness blindly.

               His hands tugged at her gently, turning her face up further. Then he bent, lowering his head and she closed her eyes as his lips brushed hers.

                It was the smallest of touches, the barest trailing of his mouth. His breath hovered around her as her eyes fluttered, as she held herself rigidly at his command.

                Then he pressed his lips to hers and she sighed into his kiss, at the heat that enveloped her. Her fingers curled into the mattress under her body, clutching it the way she suddenly wanted to grip him; his wrists, his arms, his shoulders. She trembled from the strength she used to keep her hands down at her sides and away from him.

                His lips left hers slightly, drawing away to breathe her in. And when he returned to her, his kiss was harder, insistent.

                Rey felt her head fall back on her neck, his thumbs digging into her jaw to push her face up, to demand all of her. She gave herself over, following him as he coerced her lips to part, as his tongue swept her mouth. His forcefulness bent her back, her hand gliding across the bed at her side to hold her. And as she met his tongue with her own, she released the mattress with her other hand, reaching up reflexively. Her arm slid up under his, hand slipping in nimbly to wrap around his neck and tangle in his hair.

                He groaned softly into her mouth at her touch, his shoulder stiffening under her arm as she spread her fingers along the nape of his neck, as she clawed them around locks of his hair. And it was as thick as she had suspected, his hair. Thick and wavy, curling at the ends. She released his neck long enough to brush his hair from his forehead and temple, slipping through the waves to return to his neck to latch on once more.

                His kiss turned hard at her caress, his fingers curling and digging into her jaw almost painfully, dragging her off her hip and onto her knees, into his chest. She collided with him solidly, her other hand striking his chest as she fought for balance again. He was hard all around; a chest like a wall, his arms coiled tight on either side of her smaller form. She had never felt as protected as she did then and her fingers curled into his chest, scratching into an abrasive material, a rough surface. His tongue swept hers, his kiss violent, and he dropped his hands away from her face to trail down her neck and her collar, searching. Reaching.

                Rey arched her body into his palms, breaking from his mouth and heaving for breath as she felt his hands slip down to track heavily over her breasts. Her fingers tightened in his hair, practically yanking it in desperation.

                He followed her, turning his face to seize her lips in his kiss, and he palmed her breasts achingly, fingers rubbing at her nipples.

                She grimaced, moaning as his mouth left hers, as he buried his face into her neck. She couldn’t focus, couldn’t _function_. His hands were everywhere, his tongue tasting her collarbone and slipping up the straining line of her neck to a spot that instantly weakened her thighs and sent her bowing against him.

               He made a small, appreciative sound against her ear as she dissolved into his chest, his hands sliding sideways and dragging low on her ribs, his thumbs bringing her nipples to harden almost painfully.

                She wanted to question everything then, her brow drawing in slightly. She wanted, no, _needed_ to know who he was. She wanted to know how she knew him. She wanted to know how he somehow seemed to know her body better than she did.

                And she wanted to know if this was what he really wanted, if this was what _she_ really wanted. If this was even _real_ -

                He suddenly tore away from her, turning his head from her neck, dropping his hands from her body as if she had burned him.

                She almost fell off the side of her bed as he recoiled but she still had a firm grip on his hair and she stopped him with the hold, hovering precariously over the edge of the mattress for a startled second that seemed to stretch into eternity as she teetered.

                He came back to her quickly, catching her and straightening her with rough hands. As she panted dazedly, he lowered her back to her knees slowly and then reached up to pry her fingers from his hair, from his neck.

                She allowed him to move her, to separate her from him. And as she settled back on her heels, she lifted her head to look at him hazily, blinking. “You _don’t_ want this,” she stated firmly in realization, steadier than she felt in that moment.

                He backed away from her almost cautiously, a shadow once more as the starlight illuminated his broad shoulder and wild waves of hair, but not his face. He put space between them, widening the distance enough that she suddenly felt as if he was worlds away. And she frowned inwardly, grimaced as she understood that it pained her somehow.

                He exhaled, the breath escaping him audibly but weakly as he uttered, “I detest you.”

                Her entire world fell apart.

                For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. The room around her flashed, trembled as if displayed from a holo-book, as if this entire dream was a hologram. She winced at his words, bent over as if he had physically hurt her.

                He stood before her silently as she heaved, as she reached to her bed for support. And for a moment she believed deep within herself that he wanted to come to her; that he wanted to hold her even though his own words had crippled her.

                “Then why are you here?” she questioned him faintly, her voice dropping to a rasp as she tried to focus, to orient herself. She only saw the bed under her hand, spinning and pulsing, and she fixed her eyes on it to stop the vertigo, attempting to steady her breathing.

                He didn’t respond, his hands clenching into fists at his sides in the silence.

                She snapped her head up, anger now rising inside, the same rage that she had fended off from him earlier when he had come to her overflowing with the emotion. She felt then as if they shared the very same anger, the very same wrath, only now she wielded it with more power than he did. She felt in that moment that she could bring him to cower before her from the strength of such rage as it burned through her like flames, like lava. _“Why are you here?”_ she cried, her words cutting the air, her voice shrill.

                He immediately turned his face away from her as if she had struck him.

 

                She snapped awake in her bed, her scream echoing in the room, in her head still.

                Breathing harshly, she spun across her back to look toward the moonlight trailing in through the port windows. Three moons on this wooded planet. Enough light to bring her quarters into sweet relief unlike the darkness of her dreams. She exhaled gratefully and then fell back on her bed, her limbs almost lifeless. There was still adrenaline running through her, bringing her muscles to tense, looking for a fight.

                “It was just a dream,” she whispered, urging her pounding heart to slow back to its usual pulse. “It was just a dream.”

                And she lay on her back for a while; a minute, five. Ten. An hour. She didn’t know how long she blinked at the ceiling of her quarters, how long it took to calm her heart for it kept jumping up and speeding when she lost herself in the memory of her dream.

                But as she finally rolled over onto her side, she found that she was still smarting from the pain, from his words. From his touch.

                These dreams would not be the end of her, she decided. She would find a way to curb them, to push them aside. To dream better and lighter dreams, dreams full of sunlight and laughter.

                She would not let these dreams win.

 

** Next Chapter - Chapter Seven: **

He hated her but he wanted her just as strongly and she realized in the moment that it was tearing him to pieces. This was why he was mad, why he was so forceful with her tonight. And she also realized that he would only become more so every time he came to her in her dreams; it only seemed to build with each nocturnal visit. His anger would not lessen with her, not until he finally had her.

 


	8. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now we're pretty much at explicit, I would say! Thanks for the comments and kudos, guys! I appreciate it so much!!

Chapter Seven:

 

                The next morning found her agitated, edgy. She went through her normal routine in the early morning hours, the sonic shower doing nothing to calm her. She should’ve taken a full water shower but the water on the Resistance base was limited and she was unwilling to steal it from someone else who would need it more than she did. Dressing in the early morning light of the sun peeking in through her port windows, she was distracted, staring blindly at the wall as she pulled on her beige and white uniform, as she sat on the edge of her bed to tie her hair up into her customary three buns.

                If Luke was correct, her anger was manifesting in a way that she was uncomfortable with. It would make sense, she reflected as she pulled on her boots. It made sense if it had manifested as the man in her dreams that he would consistently be irate, that he would hate her, as that was his primary purpose; her fighting with her resentment instead of accepting it. But that was according to Luke and she was uncertain that was what her dreams were trying to convey.

                But she didn’t understand why she could somehow also find comfort in him, in his fury, in his presence. Why she would almost want to covet his ire when it was so overpowering, why she would still somehow wish for him, why her body would almost _require_ him.

                Did she require her anger? Is that what the dreams meant? She needed to face her wrath head on but she also needed it, desired it almost lustfully. She frowned and then grimaced, shaking her head in confusion before lowering it into her hands wearily. What kind of person did it make her that she wanted her rage, that she _coveted_ it, and in a sexual way?

                She streaked to her feet, shaking her head harshly. No. That’s not what this was. It couldn’t be her anger that she dreamt of, couldn’t be something such as that. Pushing the thought away for another day, she searched her room blindly before making her way to her door. She was to assist Poe today in training the new Resistance cadets. These young recruits had “applied” from the latest group of pilots graduating from their respective schools and academies. Some had been pooled and then poached if they hadn’t come freely to join the Resistance and now she would sit in with Poe to see how well they managed in simulated missions and exploits; she would have to judge these young men and women that had had schooling for something that she had put herself through as survival and as a hobby. She would have to draw from her own instincts and teachings to evaluate students that had gone through years of training already.

                Gritting her teeth and exhaling purposefully, she stalked out of her room, the door swishing closed behind her departing form. She was angry and confused which made her beyond ready to tackle the day ahead.

 

                When she returned to her room, she was ready to drop.

                She had meant to spend the remainder of her day in meditation, attempting some of the practices that Luke had left her with when he had left the Resistance base once more. But assisting Poe in the class had been arduous.

                She didn’t know Poe’s background; how he had learned to pilot, how he had come to be part of the Resistance, how many missions he had flown under them, and how he had become the best pilot and then leader of the Black Squadron. She was sure she had overheard him tell Finn that both of his parents had served the Republic but beyond that she knew next to nothing of the pilot.

                What she did know was that the class he’d taught today had been an ungrateful bunch; proud, haughty, and unworthy of the cause. She had felt Poe’s irritation with the group especially when they had begun to band together to question him and his flight simulations, his tips and tricks. She had felt her anger rise within, had wanted to somehow wield the Force in some way to take the students to task, to make them understand. And in the end she had turned to look at Poe as he had glanced toward her and that had been the end. He had dismissed the class with the warning that if there was to be another session in which he sustained such rebellion, he would send them home which would require the Resistance base to move to a new, unknown destination. And when the room had fallen into silence, he had sent his message home in saying that the Resistance did not require arrogance; it required loyalty and that was all he looked for.

                Rey assumed that the next time he had those same students in his class that he would not be facing the same egotism.

                Either way, she was exhausted upon retiring to her room for the night. Poe had been absent for dinner though she had noticed Finn doubling up on food when she had run late to meet him in the mess hall for dinner. She smiled slightly remembering how he had sat with her only for a few minutes before stating directly that he would be taking the food to Poe’s quarters as the pilot had only wanted to retire to his room for the night. She had been left alone to eat the rest of her dinner before she also had decided to end the night early and sleep in.

                But now as she showered once more and stepped from her refresher nude, she searched her dimly lit room and debated crawling into bed naked. She didn’t normally sleep without either a long shirt or some type of trousers and light shirt but today, and lately, she wanted the feel of the sheet on her bare skin, wanted to feel the padding of her bed better.

                She also felt deep inside that she would dream tonight. She couldn’t place why exactly; only that she felt the need hovering overhead and deep within her. Standing before her bed, she wanted to step into her dream fully and become immersed in it, wanted to feel her anger and understand it, understand the theme to those strange visions that haunted her at night; wanted to place the man in her dreams once and for all if he actually existed.

                As for the other aspect of it, she understood that being nude in her dreams could mean to face something head on with no barriers or protection, with just herself and her confidence or, on the flip side, her vulnerabilities and doubts. Whatever the case, that was what she was going to do. Her sleep was being disturbed by something that she didn’t understand, and whatever would help her understand those images, the more she wanted to support it.

                When she crawled into bed, she sighed as she felt the lightness of the blanket, the sheets beneath her naked body as she slid across its soft surface to place her head down wearily on her pillow.

                Hopefully tonight she would dream of him, of her anger; she could attempt to understand why she was so angry, why he seemed to prowl like a wild animal in a place that was supposed to be her safe haven. Why the emotions within her dream were so polarizing and so hard to understand, to take.

                And she was lost in sleep as soon as her head touched her pillow, as she finally settled wearily

 

                He moved in the darkness, shifting the lithe way a shadow did when it darted from the sun.

                She slid across the bed on her rear, flipping over to face his presence. There was a dangerous feeling in the air, in this dream tonight. She strained to see but there was nothing there yet, not until her vision became accustomed to the darkness.

                He moved again except now she understood what he was doing, why he was seemingly pacing back and forth. He was stalking, watching her, assessing her. His movements were rigid, brimming with some sort of dark energy and she waited, allowing him to observe her as she sat naked on her bed.

                She found that she liked his eyes on her, that it made her feel prouder, stronger.

                “You are very angry tonight,” she whispered, her voice almost lost in the silence.

                He slowed and there he was; the faintest silhouette against a lighter black. His broad shoulders seemed a bit more defined tonight, his waves of hair curling at the edges of his face and neck. As he turned to pace once more she caught the hard line of his arms and the hands that were clenched into tight fists.

                She swallowed a lump that had somehow formed in her throat and she inhaled freely, deeply, as he slowed in mid-turn of his pace. “Why are you here? What do you want?” she asked him abruptly and she rose from her side, settling onto her knees. The air was cool around her heated figure and she relished the dip in temperature. “The last time you came to me, you told me you detested me.”

                And as the words left her mouth she suddenly realized that she could remember every dream that had come before. How interesting that she could remember them here in the midst of another dream, but forget them so completely when her eyes opened to the waking world.

                How she could remember how closely this shadow resembled Kylo Ren.

                Even then, just remembering, she didn’t normally feel the need to run in the dreams she had of him but something was different this time. She wasn’t sure she trusted this edginess with his person, this caginess. She watched as he hesitated in the darkness, as he merely breathed, those wide shoulders lifting and falling roughly.

                If he was a manifestation of her anger, she suddenly understood the desire to flee.

                Instead, she lifted a hand and held it out toward him cautiously, fingers extended. “What do you want?” she asked again though she thought she knew now without needing to hear him speak.

                As if loosed, he came to her in one fluid movement, appearing at the edge of her bed. His hand took hold of her outstretched arm, bare fingers wrapping around her wrist and yanking roughly.

                A small sound escaped her in surprise as she was pulled forward off balance and then she was pressed against him, her head falling back. She had been expecting to find the hard material of his clothes the way she always did, the strange rough weave of his coat. But her palms met hot skin and she was surprised for only a moment before his hand tangled into her loose hair and tightened, his other arm slipping tightly around her waist. She clenched her teeth as he dragged her head back even further, forcing her chin up, but all she saw was the outline of him.

                This was why he had looked different tonight. He was unclothed from the waist up and as he seemed to glare down at her, she spread her fingers wide on his chest, trailing them across the hard planes as if to soothe him.

                His breath came from him in a hard exhale, his arm tightening further around her waist. And as she curled her fingers to dig her nails into his skin, he twisted her hair and leaned down to kiss her, one hard savage kiss that curled the very inside of her tightly.

                He raged. That was the word for what she felt from him; the tension in his body, the tight grip on her hair that bordered on arousingly excruciating, the hard demand of his mouth. She bowed under him, feeling him bend her back as he leaned into her, as he dragged her up hard against his length with the one curled arm at her waist.

                She returned his kiss just as roughly, demanding, something that she felt he hadn’t expected and possibly did not want in the moment, for his hand in her hair tightened so much that she made a pained sound under his lips.

                His hold loosened the smallest bit but his anger did not abate. If anything, she felt him restrain himself slightly though his rage seemed to simmer just below the surface of that tense calm. His mouth left hers, his breath coming harshly against her jaw as he turned his face from hers, pressing the bone of his cheek against her lips almost weakly.

                She refused him, her hands sliding down the hard planes of his torso before winding around to his back. His skin was smooth, hot to the touch, shifting under her palms as he breathed, as he seemed to almost wince under her touch as if she burned him. She trailed her fingers over the dips in his back, along the muscle she encountered and then she took hold of his rear and yanked him forward into her.

                He wanted her. Even in his anger, in his surprise as she molded herself against him, she felt his hardness through his clothes, just along her belly. He had drawn his head back a bit at finding his pelvis against her but as she lifted her eyes to where she thought his were, she was certain he was meeting her stare, was locking eyes with her in the moment.

                He hated her but he wanted her just as strongly and she realized in the moment that it was tearing him to pieces. This was why he was mad, why he was so forceful with her tonight. And she also realized that he would only become more so every time he came to her in her dreams; it only seemed to build with each nocturnal visit. His anger would not lessen with her, not until he finally had her.

                Shame she didn’t know who he _was_.

                He ground his hips against her, his hand sliding down from her back to her rear to pull her against him tightly.

                Her jaw fell open at the contact, her arms locked under his, and he seemed to realize that he held her trapped for he bent his head to meet her mouth with his, ravenous at the taste of her. As she fell back under his kiss, he slipped his hands under her rear and lifted her in one easy movement. Her lips rose to meet his on his level as he dragged her onto his hard frame and then he was toppling her backward.

                She automatically grabbed him by his own rear, feeling herself freefall for a moment before she landed on the bed with him on top of her. A sound escaped her and then his mouth came down on hers again, hot, searing, his body pushing into her and trapping her down onto her bed. She winced at his sudden weight, at the clash of his hip bone against the sharpness of her own. “Y-you…you’re hurting me-“

                He rose away from her as if she had struck him with her words, his hands streaking out from beneath.

                She breathed for a mere moment, recovering as she blinked rapidly, his harsh breaths matching hers in the stillness.

                But she understood then as she regained herself.

                _You’re never going to willingly hurt me. No matter how angry you become with me. No matter how angry I am with myself. If this is my anger, I will never hurt myself._

                She stared up into the darkness that was his face, taking in the hard lines of his shoulder and neck against the lighter blackness in her room. And as she said the words to herself, she pulled his hips back down to hers, slowly this time, moving him into a position that didn’t bring their angles to conflict. She felt his hardness pressed into her center and her lips parted at the connection, blinking rapidly, yearningly, as he settled against her perfectly.

                A soft breath escaped him as if he, too, understood how he fit her seamlessly, and she immediately lifted a hand from his back, taking hold of his face.

                She wanted to see. She wanted to _know_. 

                Her fingers curled around the hard edge of his jaw, her thumb shifting to the part of his lips. She wanted to see if he would react the way she had, if she was alone in her emotions, in her desires.

                Her thumb brushed his lower lip roughly and he responded in the next moment, teeth taking hold of it and biting down, harder than she had expected but still gentle, before releasing. Her lips fell open at the gesture and below, she felt her hips push up against his instinctively, wanting him, needing him.

                His head turned along the palm of her hand before his jaw nudged her hand back, before he darted down to press his face into the curve of her neck. Her mouth softened into an o, her eyes sliding closed and she allowed a small whimper to escape her as he pushed back down into her hips and then shifted. His hardness pressed along the very center of her and her head fell back, legs tightening against the sides of his hips, her hand slipping to take hold of him by the back of his neck. His hair was smooth, soft in her fingers, curling in waves as she grabbed him and then dug her nails into the tender skin of his nape. He drew back at the sensation with a low groan and pushed into her hips again, rubbing against her in need, his tongue trailing the column of her neck before touching on a spot that caused her to arch into him. He ran his tongue over it again, lips following, and she shifted once more, mindlessly meeting the thrust of his hips against hers. She felt his arms on either side of her, his head lifting from her neck as he moved again below, curving into her with every pulse of his hips. She could barely see the outline of his shoulders over her, the curl to his hair as it dipped along his neck, as it fell in waves along the side of his still unfamiliar face. As he pressed into her in one slow drag, she fell back along the bed again, a wanting sigh leaving her mouth.

                He felt good between her legs, right. And she felt his eyes on her as she lifted her hips to meet his, feeling every bit of him through his layers of clothing, feeling that she was becoming slick because of him. Her hand along his ribs slid across to the small of his back, slipping beneath the band of his trousers to the hard curve of his rear.

                He bent toward her once more, leaning past her jaw and hovering over her ear. “I’ll have you one day soon,” he whispered to her, his breath tracing her skin as he spoke.

                She turned her head into his, cheek to cheek, his hair curling onto her temple. He hadn’t stopped moving below, slowly shifting rhythmically against her as his words penetrated the sweet haze she had descended into.

                But she couldn’t focus on them as much as she wanted to, not so much as she wanted to hear his voice again. She knew it so well somehow. She had heard it speak softly, had heard words fall from his lips monotonously, expressionlessly. And she had heard his voice call aloud in anger, brimming with fury.

                “You will know my name then.” He trailed his lips up toward her temple, down to round her cheek. “In fact,” he murmured, and his tone became dark, sensuous, “you will _scream_ it.”

                As her lips parted in need, he took advantage and kissed her forcefully. His hips began to rub against hers in earnest, with as much violence as his mouth on hers.

                She knew in that moment, as she buckled under the strength of him, that she very well _would_ scream his name the day he came for her. She gasped against his mouth, a soft pant rising into a loud helpless cry, and then she dragged him down to her with a hand on his back in an attempt to unite herself with him as she came under the heavy drag of his hips.

                He slowed against her, his thrusts becoming almost lazy as the shivers coursed through her, as she trembled between his arms, beneath his perfect body. His breath was soft now along her neck as her head fell back to the bed in a daze.

                “Just like that,” he said quietly, satisfaction in his deep tone, and he traced his lips across her tender skin.

 

                When she opened her eyes again the sky was turning pale in the distance through her porthole windows and she was alone in her bed. But as she shifted she felt the delicious tremors that rippled through her still sensitive body and she merely allowed her head to fall back on her pillow, a tremulous sigh leaving her lips.

                She was still feeling the ripples throughout her body as someone pressed the buzzer at the door to her quarters.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Eight: **

_I’m having erotic dreams of a man that I don’t think exists. How do I find him?_


	9. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, just a reminder that I have the soundtracks up for these chapters/Books. Check them out. I really do think they help the setting for this story! I'll try to update my profile with the links. It might be easier to try them on Spotify though since 8tracks only gives you a limited amount of time to listen per week unless you're subscribed.
> 
> Besides that, thank you guys for the kudos and bookmarks! If you leave a comment, I will usually reply but those are awesome TOO!!!

Chapter Eight:

 

                She couldn’t focus to save her life and she blamed it entirely on the dream she’d had the night before. Almost frantically did she search the base, peering into every male face and form that she passed, poking her head out into the hangar bay to watch the new recruits that arrived that morning. They were practically teens though, none of them tall enough or broad enough to remind her of him.

                _He has to be real,_ she repeated to herself over and over again as she practically paced on line for breakfast later in the morning. _He has to be. He has to be-_

                Because if he wasn’t, her dreams were going to kill her.

                She couldn’t bear to ask Luke about them. How humiliating would that be? How did one even start that conversation?

                _I’m having erotic dreams of a man that I don’t think exists. How do I find him?_

                “Did you hear?” Finn asked, suddenly appearing at her shoulder and causing her to whip around on him.

                _“_ What man??” she yelped at him in surprise.

                Finn drew back with an expression of such confusion that it was almost comical. “What?”

              “What?” she asked him in return breathlessly. And then she closed her eyes and shook her head. “Nothing. _Nothing._ What did you ask me?”

                His eyebrows practically jumping off his forehead, he cocked his head at her. “Those caffeinated drinks are going to be the end of you,” he stated.

                “I haven’t had one yet,” she whispered in horror.

                His lips curved and he made a low sound. “Ooh…”

                She needed the man to be real, she realized yet again. Grimacing, she sighed. “What did you ask me?” she asked dejectedly.

                Looking past her, he motioned with his head and she turned to see that the line was moving. She led, feeling him at her shoulder as he shuffled with her. “I asked if you’d heard,” he said again.

                “Heard what?”

                “They’re throwing a party,” Finn murmured and when she turned to look at him with a frown over her shoulder, he motioned excitedly, his eyes popping wide.

                “A what?” she asked in confusion.

                “A party?” he repeated, his excitement fading slightly. “Look, I know Jakku was a desert planet and everything, but you must know what a party is. Festivities? Food? Drinks? Guests? A party!”

                “I know what a party is,” she stated with a roll of her eyes. But she turned away, her voice lowering so that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t hear her next words. “I’ve just…never been to one.”

                “Me, neither,” he said behind her firmly.

                She turned back around as the line slowed and then stopped again. “You neither?” she asked him.

                He shook his head but then lifted his hands quickly. “I mean, I was on duty during a few of the ones thrown at…on StarKiller. I had to do the rounds and guard the exits mostly. But I’ve never actually been to a real party. A real party! Can you imagine? The General didn’t want to hold it here but I heard Poe say that she wants to boost morale, that since we’re slowly regrouping, that we could use a celebration.”

                “Ah, so Poe was your contact for that information, then,” she said to him teasingly.

                Finn stared at her, his face dropping. “A party, Rey. Read my lips, say it with me. A party.”

                “A _party_ ,” she echoed him, her Coruscant accent stressing the word out liltingly. With a slight shake of her head, she turned to see the line inching along again. “Will she have any guests?” she asked absentmindedly, trying to see what the menus would be this morning.

                Finn squeezed close to her side again, his voice falling into a whisper. “A few captains, another general. _Admirals_ ,” he said and the excitement was back in his voice, his hands practically clapping in glee.

                Rey spun back around. “Admirals? Here?” she demanded in disbelief. “That means security protocols, _enhanced_ security protocols! Will they bring their own security details or would we have to provide them?” And she slowed to think, her voice becoming distant as she mused it over. “Is that why that technician, the blonde one-“

                “Matt?” 

                “Him,” Rey pointed. “Is that why he came to my quarters so early this morning asking to see my room console to update it?” she reflected faintly.

                She had just snapped awake from that dream when the tech had come calling. On wobbly legs and disoriented, barely dressing herself properly, she had stumbled to the entryway and asked who was at her door through the console comm. Once he had sourly given his name and stated his purpose, she had granted him access, the harsh light from the hallway seeping in and casting his face and figure in silhouette while blinding her at the same time over his shoulder.

                She had rather rudely inquired if he knew what time it was and he had replied just a shade more obnoxiously that it was early but that he still needed to take a look at her room console to make adjustments and updates to the system.

                He had been the right height as the man from her dream; even his build had been close, but the hair had been all wrong. Upon realizing it, she had merely motioned to the console flippantly and spun around to head back toward her bed.

                She had still been wet from her dream and as he had run a systems diagnostic on her console, she had felt mortification slowly seep in.

                If he had noticed, he gave no indication.

                He had been done in less than five minutes and had barely bid her farewell, disappearing out through her doorway while tossing over his shoulder in a mumble, “I’m a radar technician. Why do they have me doing this crap?” But her door had already slid shut behind him, bringing back the blissful darkness.

                By then it had been time to get started anyway.

                Finn was speaking. “-rude, that guy,” he huffed. “He was knocking on my door at seven in the morning.”

                “Seven,” she repeated wistfully. “That’s nice. I could’ve slept another hour if he had come by at seven.”

                “We’re on different floors,” Finn pointed out in a withering tone.

                “Seven is such a round, happy number,” she sighed.

                “Seven is a very angular looking number, actually.”

                “Seven is my new favorite number.”

                And then they finally reached the food displays and began to heap breakfast onto their trays.

 

                It wasn’t until the news had finally been announced throughout the base that Rey began to worry. It was scheduled for the following week which gave her six days to find out all of the information she would need. Would she be working the event? Was she to be a guest? If she was a guest, she had no clothes to wear to such an affair. What would she do? She would have no time to go planet hopping and shopping. That and she had no money to do so anyway. She wasn’t paid to do anything on the base; she lived freely and worked for room and board. Could she wear her normal beige or gray uniforms? Maybe she could just skip the entire event.

                She had quickly taken the lift to the lower levels where the war rooms were located and gone to seek the General out. “General,” she called upon entering one of the rooms and finding the older woman looking at holo-maps of the Resistance base where they currently resided.

                The General had been in the middle of consulting with a man that Rey recognized as a head of security for the base. At being summoned, Leia had turned, the man mirroring her.

                Rey slid to a stop several feet away. “I apologize. This is a bad time. I can come back-“

                “Not at all,” the General said and she motioned her forth while also lifting a hand to the man’s arm. “Can you give us a moment, lieutenant?” she asked of him.

                He nodded, sent a nod to Rey as well, and moved off.

                Rey apologized once more as she neared. “It’s just…these festivities you have planned. I don’t…will we all be expected to appear? Are we working some part of this event? The details were unclear-“

                “Oh, you’re all invited to the event. The new recruits from the base on D’Qar have also been invited as we’re hoping this will boost morale. Though I don’t think we need it; these new recruits have such a high drive since…Hosnian Prime.” The General bowed her head with a sigh. “Whatever the case, I’ve asked for additional security personnel from D’Qar to staff it as well so they can enjoy it,” the General replied. “But you, especially. I would like to introduce you to some of the guests.”

                Rey blinked. “Oh. Oh…” she murmured, understanding somewhat then. “I…I don’t know that…well, see the problem is…”

                “You are nervous, you are uncomfortable, and you most likely have nothing you feel that you can wear to the festivities,” Leia supplied promptly.

                Her jaw fell open slowly. “Y-yes.  Basically.”

                With a small smile, the General leaned in. She was shorter than Rey by quite a few inches which made Rey feel the need to stoop a bit. “Come by my quarters tomorrow afternoon. We will figure out just the thing so that it can be delivered ahead of the festivities,” she murmured and when she drew back, the smile had widened.

                Rey nodded. “O-okay. I will,” she replied and still blinking in slight confusion, she nodded once more to the General and then turned, making a quick but muddled exit.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Nine: **

With a soft exhalation, she settled in and closed her eyes. And as she slowly relaxed, she could have sworn that he was already in her bed even before she succumbed to the depths of sleep.

 

 


	10. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EXPLICIT! SOOOOOOOOO EXPLICIT! GOODNIGHT, FOLKS!
> 
> You guys are never going to see me the same way again..

Chapter Nine:

 

                She went to bed that night with the strangest sense of anticipation. Tomorrow she would visit with the General, no doubt to have her measured and outfitted for the party.

                She had never had that done for an occasion. Or at all, really. All of her clothes had been found on long dead ships or purchased in exchange for the parts she had scavenged. Even those days, she had gone without food for well over a day though it had been a necessity as her previous garments would have been falling apart by then and of no use against the relentless Jakku sun.

                Her body was brimming with a strange sort of electricity, of excitement, for another reason as well though. As she pulled back the covers, she knew that she would see him tonight. He would no doubt be angry with her as he always seemed to be but she felt something else, something more, and she tingled expectantly.

                This was why he had to be real. This was why the man in her dreams also couldn’t be a figment of her imagination or her mind attempting to separate the anger from herself, into the form of another body, as Luke had suggested. There was a connection there, something more than an idea in her head. He was _real_. And perhaps he was sensing her too, was having the same dreams as her except maybe in his dreams, he couldn’t see her as she couldn’t see him in hers.

                It had to do with the Force, she was almost sure of it. He had only begun to appear after her abilities had manifested themselves.

                She would see him tonight. He would come to her the way he did only in her dreams and she would be waiting for him. Yes.

                With a soft exhalation, she settled in and closed her eyes. And as she slowly relaxed, she could have sworn that he was already in her bed even before she succumbed to the depths of sleep.

 

                In the darkness, she saw nothing. The light filtering in through her port windows was filmy, ethereal. She sighed softly in the quiet, blinking sleepy eyes toward the far side of her quarters, focusing on the wall hazily.

                The sigh turned into a groan as she felt the bed shift move behind her, as someone settled close to her with an exhalation of breath, as a hand wrapped around her bare shoulder and urged her backward.

                Closing her eyes, she did as he wanted, feeling herself mold to a broad form, her rear encountering his hardness before anything else. Whoever this nightly caller was, he had come to her naked tonight, fully and wonderfully nude. His hand alone, fingers trailing lightly over her skin, was large enough that she was certain that this man could easily hurt her, easily bring her to succumb to him.

                She turned her head toward him as his hand left her shoulder, as his fingers grasped her chin. Warm breath puffed against her cheek as he bowed his head into hers, waves of his hair curling along her forehead and the bridge of her nose. She breathed him in as he did her; woods and metal, the night and the brilliant moon.

                Temptation.

               His lips brushed along her skin as he released her chin, as his hand fell and drifted down along the slope of her neck, the curve of her breast.

                She wanted him to stop there, to caress her as he had before in their previous dreams. She wanted his mouth on her, the sweep of his tongue, his breath cooling the wetness he would leave in his wake. But his hand continued its downward path, tickling lightly along her ribs and waist, rounding the curve of her hips. His hot skin was pressed to hers, hard chest to her smooth back, and she pushed her cheek into his lips, writhing under his light touch.

                His hand settled on her thigh only for a moment, urging her leg up and away from the one tucked beneath it.

                Her eyes slid open a fraction, her lips already parting in need. A breath left her, her hips pulsing as she felt his fingers slide once more and then slip in between her legs.

                His mouth dragged along her jaw, his taut form pressed tightly along her back as he kept her pinned on her side. His other arm wound under her ribs and was now curled around her waist, pulling her flush against his lean frame.

                She twisted, her head sliding back along her pillow to rest on his shoulder and she arched her hips into his palm, suddenly suffering.

                His fingers slid through her wetness, circling before slipping deep and she felt a moan escape her as she convulsed under his touch, as she stiffened, her thighs drawing together reflexively to trap his hand against her.

                He left her throbbing center and took hold of her, slick fingers skimming her knee as he slid upward and shoved her leg open once more. She felt cool air along her thighs as she was exposed and then his hand returned to her, thrusting deep and bringing her to cry aloud at his touch.

                He was not gentle now. His fingers were hard, possessive, in control. He seemed to know what she desired and as he kneaded her, she felt herself begin to come apart under his touch. She panted, her hands reaching, and one settled over his, urging him faster against her. Their fingers moved together, her hips pushing up against their shared caress, her breath escaping her in gasps.

                She felt his mouth along her jaw, felt his breath, and she turned her head senselessly, seeking him out. She found his lips easily, drew him in almost selfishly. He met her kiss, opening against her as he parted her legs further, dipping into her mouth with his tongue, his fingers mirroring him below.

                She cried out against him and he swallowed the noise, pressing her further into him as if to own her, to possess every bit of her.

                _Yes. Yes-_

                She was going to come under his hand. She fought his tongue, her other hand curling to take hold of his jaw, her fingers tangling in his hair. It was curling, soft as she remembered from her other dreams, from her glimpses of him silhouetted under her porthole windows.

                “Who…” she uttered and she felt a cry leave her as his fingers slid and circled her, as they pushed deep. “Who are you-“

                His mouth left hers, dragging along the corner of her lips, across the sensitive skin of her jaw. He still didn’t answer her. And just as she was sure she would continue to hover just at the edge of the cliff, he slid toward her neck and bit down, his fingers thrusting deep into her wetness and inside.

                She came apart around those fingers, her own becoming rigid on his and stilling him urgently as her body quaked in release. She cried out, gasping mindlessly, her shoulder lifting into his jaw as she throbbed helplessly against him.

                His mouth released her neck, hesitating before lightly running the wet tip of his tongue over the bruise she was sure he had left on her. His hand remained still under hers even as she squirmed from the waves of her orgasm.

                “Please,” she pleaded, pushing her face into the pillow yearningly. “Please tell me who you are-“

                His fingers pulled out from under hers abruptly, jarring her at the suddenness, and then that hand grasped her chin with a tight grip. She was forced toward him though his face remained in shadow and she stared into the dark silhouette before his mouth came down on hers again, a hard, stony kiss.

                He was gone a moment later, vanishing as suddenly as he came every night. She was left trembling achingly on her bed, her hips shifting at the loss of him.

                And when she came awake with a hard gasp, she was alone as always but the tingling between her thighs remained, her eyelashes fluttering as she felt her pelvis ride out the remainder of her climax in the waking world.

 

                Feeling almost hyper, Rey went to see the General in her quarters the next day.

                Leia’s door slid open just as she had reached to press the chime on the console beside the doorway. “I’ve been expecting you,” the General said lightheartedly from just inside her quarters and she motioned Rey in with a wave of her hand, moving to lead.

                Stepping over the threshold, Rey felt the door slide shut behind her before finally turning her attention to the room.

                She had expected a series of rooms, a suite perhaps, but there was only the one room and the refresher off to the side, Leia’s quarters resembling Rey’s quite strongly. It seemed the General lived by simple means the way the rest of the Resistance did on this base and she found herself appreciating it somehow. Appreciating that even as a General, Leia lived as they all did, that she didn’t settle for riches or comfort.

                Perhaps living as a princess for her early years had turned her off from the entire affair.

                “Now, the first thing we’re going to do is take your measurements,” Leia stated, exactly what Rey had expected her to say. She motioned Rey to the middle of the room and the younger woman came to stand where she had gestured, looking at the General with wide eyes.

                Lifting a small tablet from a bedside table, Leia tapped across the screen with a small frown, finger flying, and then held the tablet up with the screen facing her, the back turned toward Rey.

                A series of blue lights streamed from a small pinpoint along the back and Rey flinched slightly as the lasers fell before suddenly coming to life and shifting around the room. She froze as they centered on her, the streams skimming her shoulders and breasts, the width of her waist and hips, and then from her shoulders down to the floor. Snapping into place at each point on her body, data seemed to fill the screen for Leia’s attention returned to the tablet, eyes skimming the information.

                With a small hum, she flicked her finger across the screen a bit more before nodding in satisfaction.

                The streaming lasers vanished and Rey shifted, glad to be able to move once more.

                “I’m sending your measurements to several dressmakers and seamstresses that my family would use to create my own wardrobe years ago. Before I…gave it all up. Many of them are still in business. Working with threads and cloth is a fine, but dying, art.” She shook her head sadly. “My mothers, both of them, had the most remarkable dresses, the softest silks and fabrics. And the most ridiculous hairstyles.”

                Rey felt a smile curl her lips. “Is that what’s going to happen to me? A remarkable dress and a ridiculous hairstyle?”

                Leia waved her off. “No, not at all. You and I are going to sit down and design the type of dress you would like. We can do your hair earlier on the day of the party, something soft to frame your face.” Moving toward her bed, Leia sat herself down with a sigh and then motioned for Rey to come and sit beside her. “Let’s begin. How big would you like the skirt and train?”

 _Train_..?

                Grimacing inwardly, Rey joined her on the bed and leaned in, already dreading it.

 

                At the end of two hours, Rey’s dress had been designed and even she had to admit that it was a gorgeous thing even though she wasn’t sure she would do the dress justice.

                The tablet screen displayed a cream-colored empire waist gown with a long but loose skirt. Blue and gray streaks of color appeared at hip level and trailed down, darkening until the hem was a full and shimmering purple. No train, Rey had requested. It was bad enough that she would need to struggle on heels; to drag the train throughout the base just to reach the festivities on the bottom level…

                No train, Leia had agreed, and then she had sat back and smiled faintly at the gown as the image rotated to show the back of the dress and then a profile view.

                Rey glanced at her. “Do you…do you like it? Do you think it’s suitable?” she inquired.

                Leia nodded, eyes caught to the screen. “I do. I like it very much. It’s reminiscent of a dress my biological mother wore. I didn’t know her, as she passed during our birth, mine and Luke’s. But years later, just before Ben-” And she broke off, blinking rapidly. Swallowing slightly, she continued, “Just before Ben was born, I received an assortment of gowns my mother had owned and this is very similar to one.”

                Rey frowned slightly. “Is it okay to request? Will you…will it-“

                _Will it hurt you to see me wear something like this?_

                “I am sending in the order now,” Leia stated promptly, her fingers already moving across the tablet screen. “It should be here well before the party.” And she lowered the tablet, turning to face Rey. “You will look stunning in it, I already see it.”

                Rey gazed at her and nodded quickly, lips tightening into a line. “Thank you. For helping me. I don’t know the first thing of gowns and dresses, hair and shoes. It was never something that I-” She broke off with a helpless shrug.

                Leia’s smile grew. “Not at all. I know only too much of it even after all of these years. It is my pleasure.” And she tilted her head as if to consider something. “They were right.”

                “Who was?”

                “One of the admirals, weeks ago when I went to an off-base meeting, she recommended that we hold a celebration to boost morale and to show appreciation.” She grimaced, shaking her hand. “I was against it at first; very critical of it seeing as how we have so much work ahead of us. But we have so many new recruits joining the cause and I didn’t want them to feel how… _low_ it feels here sometimes, for them to feel that we took such a hit with the destruction of Hosnian Prime.” She shrugged. “They all need to feel valued and welcomed. This celebration, it’s a good idea.”

                Rey frowned slightly. “I thought the celebration had been your idea.”

                Leia looked at her. “Oh, no. It came up in the meeting and then just circulated and by the end we had all agreed to hold it and that it would be held here at this base instead of the Headquarters on D’Qar.” She shrugged again. “I’m still making preparations, orders for the food replicators, securing security details for the visitors-”

                “Do you need help?” Rey asked her quickly.

                Leia shook her head, waving her off. “No, no. Everything is just about done. You work on your meditation and practices. I can handle these things on my end.”

                “Okay,” Rey murmured and she slowly rose to her feet, turning to look down toward her. “Well, thank you. I appreciate all of your help today. I wouldn’t have had the faintest idea where to start-”

                “Rey,” the General cut her off, her tone suddenly cautious. “Is…everything okay?”

                Rey blinked. “General?”

                Leia squinted at her, her brow drawn low. “There’s…an aura around you, a feeling that…I can’t quite grasp…”

                Straightening, Rey quickly shook her head. “Everything is fine.”

                There was no way she would be telling the General anything about her dreams or any of the feasible reasons she would be having the dreams that she did. Especially not the tidbit that she could very well have manifested her anger into Kylo Ren according to the General’s own brother.

                She really should put in that request to see a psychiatrist.

                “Well, if there’s anything you need, anything I can help you with…” Leia said, dark eyes worried. “Please don’t hesitate. You can always come to me.”

                Feeling terrible inside, Rey nonetheless nodded rapidly, awkwardly. “I will. I will, I promise,” she said, her voice drifting off.

                And with that, she nodded once more in farewell and made her way to the door, practically racing through it as it opened for her and then slid shut behind her with a hiss.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Ten: **

But his words caused ice to spike clear through her; the heaviness of his tone, the deepness of his voice.

The resolute firmness to be found there.

“I am coming for you.”

 


	11. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SMUT! Smutsmutsmut. Enjoy!

Chapter Ten:

 

                The festivities were in full swing by the time she emerged onto the lowest floor of the base from the lift.

                With the amount of sound and music they would have, the best idea had been to hold it far underground where no one would hear anything above on the night air though there would be a squadron of pilots at the ready in case something arose in the later hours, along with heavy security throughout the underground complex.

                Admirals had begun to arrive earlier in the evening, all of them dressed in beautiful, vibrant colors. Different species and races, genders and peoples; now that she had a home and friends, Rey could finally appreciate how lovely they all were. Before, while on Jakku, she’d barely given anything a passing thought besides just staying alive and in prime physical condition to continue her scavenging.

                The dress she and the General had designed had arrived within a day of the party, promptly ending the complete and utter panic that had settled on Rey every day that it hadn’t been delivered. Even with the notification of delivery, a pilot had been sent out on a supply run to pick up the dress itself from its delivery destination off-planet, to then escort the package back to the Resistance base. By the end of that entire debacle, Rey had wanted to die. Such a big mess for a silly little dress.

                Until she had held the dress in her arms and stared at it, floored by its exquisiteness.

                _Worth it_ , she had decided then and there.

                Now wearing the beautiful gown, she found that it fit her perfectly, the skirt barely skimming the floor and flowing loosely though not widely. Some of the items that Leia had suggested to her in that tablet, jewelry and the like to complete the outfit, had been downright outrageous. Even the hairstyles accompanying the model had been large, heavy and unbelievably ridiculous. 

                All in all, she thought she looked fairly decent though very uncomfortable, especially with the shoes. The very low heel threw her off and she found herself constantly off balance and confused, her entire body consistently misreading her steps and threatening to topple her rudely to the floor. The walk down the brightly lit and decorated corridor to the main room, where the celebration was underway, was long and arduous. Nonetheless, she managed to keep a smile on her face to greet Resistance members littering the hallway and coupled up or bunched together in groups. Many of them invited her to join them but she waved them off apologetically, motioning toward the main floor and tripping at the same time.

                “What is this kriffing-“

                “Rey!” Finn cried as she finally made it down the hallway to the doorways of the main room. She had asked him to wait for her at the door so she wouldn’t make an entrance alone and would have a companion with her in such an uncomfortable situation. His dark eyes widened as he caught sight of her, his jaw falling open as he met her at the doorways. “You look beautiful!” he exclaimed, and he threw his arms out at his sides and looked her up and down in excitement.

                Even irritated with the shoes, she felt a smile curl her lips. “Please help me,” she pleaded and she fell into his arms, scooting into his side and hanging on for dear life. “These shoes are horrendous and I want to throw them.”

                Grinning and pulling her under his arm, he turned her with him and accompanied her into the room. They had done a magnificent job, especially with such time constraints. The music was loud and exotic, the servers were walking around with trays of different colored liquids and liquor, and stunning peoples buzzed about in a festive mood in a room lit brilliantly and decorated beautifully.

                “Beauty is pain, Rey. Beauty is pain,” Finn stated, and even as she loosed a high-pitched whine in his ear, he pointed to the side of the large room. “There’s Poe!”

                Sure enough, the pilot had just lifted a pale glass of liquid from a passing server and had returned his attention to the group he stood with. Hearing his name mentioned, he turned around in mild surprise and immediately broke into a huge grin as he caught sight of them. He motioned them over with a wide gesture and then leaned into the group to murmur something only for the group as a whole to turn toward Finn and Rey and then all call together for them to join them.

                “Rey, look at you!” Jessika cried as they reached the group and she motioned at the dress. “You look amazing!”

                “She looks gorgeous!” Poe exclaimed to Finn and he leaned in and dropped a quick kiss on Rey’s cheek, bringing Rey to blush thankfully.

                “Gorgeous and dangerous, just like me,” Finn declared which caused the group to burst into laughter.

                They fell into an easy chatter, Poe lifting more glasses of the same clear liquid from the tray of a passing server, nodding his thanks and then handing them off throughout the group.

                And for the first time ever in her life, Rey looked around the group and saw friends; actual, real friends. And she didn’t know what to feel in the moment, didn’t know how to stop the butterfly wings in her lungs and chest from breaking out in sheer happiness. She relished every laugh from Jessika, every mischievous quip from Yolo Ziff, Temmin Wexley’s slightly gruff yet still amiable conversation, but mostly the easy banter between Finn, Poe, and herself. The group had been there for the attack on StarKiller base and they had come out victorious.

               Today was a day to celebrate just as much as it was to boost morale.

              And with that, Rey, leaning on Poe now, held her partially consumed glass out into the middle of the group and stated, “To the Resistance.”

              The group immediately hushed though Ziff whooped loudly. “To the Resistance!” And they clinked glasses together, taking the sip and returning to the festivities and conversation.

 

                The General had come for her an hour into the revelry, the group falling into a respectful silence as she had appeared at their side. Still half stumbling on the damn heels, Rey had depended on Leia to guide her throughout the room to introduce her to numerous other captains and Resistance officials before visiting the admirals. The names had been too many to remember though she had tried her best and she had been suitably proper during the introductions.

                They had greeted her politely, some quite welcoming, but all had observed her with something akin to awe.

                It had disarmed her at first and then slowly wore on her the more people had done it throughout the night. They already believed her to be something that she still was not, she’d realized, and it had begun to weigh on her steadily until she almost couldn’t bear it.

                Which was why, four hours into the festivities, she sat alone at a side table nursing her fourth glass of clear liquid, which she was sure was some type of hard liquor for she was beginning to see things a bit off and couldn’t focus as well, and stretching her feet now that she didn’t have to stand on them. The balls of her feet and her calves were in complete pain already and she was positive she would wake in the morning sore all over.

                Finn and Poe had disappeared along with the group she had joined earlier in the night and while she wished for a familiar face, she was also glad to have a moment to herself.

                “May I join you?” a tentative male voice asked as a pair of tall legs in pressed slacks came into her line of sight beside her.

                Caught leaning over a foot out of its shoe and rolling it around with a wince, she quickly snapped up toward the newcomer, snatching her foot away from view to push blindly back under the table. “Um, yes, yes! Of course! Sorry. Just…” she waved at her legs dismissively even as she pushed her pained heel back into its shoe. “I’m not used to heels and so many hours on them, it’s just not for me,” she said to the man that stood beside her.

                He was tall and lanky, seemingly quick with a smile. As she mumbled on, the smile on his face became impish and understanding. “I, uh, can’t say that I empathize? But I do sympathize if it makes you feel better,” he said, nearing the seat beside her.

                She motioned him into it openly, settling back against her own seat to unwind wearily. “Sympathy is lovely all the same,” she said and she held a hand out to him. “I’m Rey.”

                He immediately tossed his hand out to clasp hers, shaking it firmly. “Cameron. Or Cam. Nice to meet you, Rey.” And he paused, still holding her hand, a frown crossing his face. “Wait. Rey? Rey, the girl that…” And he turned to motion over his shoulder toward the groupings of captains, generals, and admirals clustered around the room.

                Grimacing, Rey nodded. “That’s me,” she sighed.

                He finally released her hand, now looking at her awkwardly. “Right,” he stated and he chuckled, lifting a hand to his dark hair and running it through. “Well, I’ve heard all the stories but don’t worry, I won’t pry. I just…wanted to sit with someone during break. Once the party is over I’ll hop the transport back home and my duty will be done for the day.”

                “Oh, are you with-“ And she motioned toward the clusters of officials throughout the room. And now that she looked closer, she noticed the uniform he wore. He was a security detail for one of the admirals, she noted silently.

                “Yeah, I’m actually part of the security detail for my mother. She’s one of the admirals here today. I was just relieved for a break and then I’ll go back to my post,” he replied. He motioned to her, questioning. “Why are you here all alone? Someone like you…” he shrugged.

                She shook her head, gesturing flippantly. “Oh, I’ve been walking around the room the entire evening. It’s probably time for me to make my exit, honestly-“

                “Please don’t,” Cam said quickly. “At least not for the next few minutes. Will you keep me company? I don’t know anyone here and it’s a bit uncomfortable.” And he motioned hastily, “I mean, unless you’re very tired in which case, by all means-“

                “No, no,” Rey waved him off. “It’s fine. I am more than happy to keep you company until your break is over. I’m sure it’s not as fun as being a part of the festivities but you definitely deserve a break.”

                He settled once more, a cute grin flashing. “Thanks. I just, like I said, I don’t know anyone. Even the security detail, we all have different shifts and different home locations so I don’t know the others who signed on for this job.” He shrugged again and glanced over his shoulder momentarily before turning back to look at her. “You look phenomenal, by the way.”

                The blush that rose in Rey’s cheeks couldn’t be suppressed. “Well, I…thank you! That’s very kind,” she said and she hesitated for a moment as she felt the heat that came with recognizing the compliment, the way the world seemed a bit slower than usual then.

                Perhaps four glasses had been a bit too much.

                Shrugging it off internally, she leaned toward him causing him to lean toward her as well as if she shared a secret. “Actually, the General dressed me today and helped me with my hair,” she murmured confidentially, her voice dropping. “I’m just…rubbish at these sorts of things.”

                Cam stared at her for a long moment, so long that Rey wondered if he had heard her correctly. Then he blinked, seeming to come back to the moment. “Oh. Oh! Really?” he asked and his eyes dropped to admire the dress on her once more. “Well, the General…has very good taste, then,” he said and he blinked rapidly, studying the dress before his eyes darted back to meet hers. Then he seemed to take in her hairstyle and his lips parted questioningly. “Is that…it’s not quite as elaborate as the usual customs of Naboo..?”

                Rey blinked at him in surprise. “I…I wouldn’t know,” she replied and she leaned in once more, curious. “Have you been to Naboo?” she inquired. “I’ve heard all of the stories but I can’t say I’ve ever been. I lived my whole life on Jakku before this. I never knew anything else,” and she shrugged helplessly, her face lightening in cheer.

                Cam seemed lost again, distance in his eyes. “What…what did you do on Jakku?” he asked slowly.

                The cheer faded slightly as she scrambled for an answer internally. “Oh, uh…nothing. Nothing, really. Just some…” she gestured distractedly, “some small work here and there-“

                “Scavenging,” Cam murmured, his face still and expressionless, his voice falling to a murmur.

                Rey’s heart dropped into her stomach, her lips moving but no sound coming out. How had he known that? Frowning faintly, her eyes darted back toward where the General spoke with a couple of human female admirals, seemingly holding court. Natural for a former princess, and she wished in that moment that she held that sort of poise. Stars, did everyone know her background now? How far had her story traveled? “I…yes,” she replied haltingly and then she deflated, turning to look at Cam once more. “Yes. I was a scavenger on Jakku.”

                He merely stared at her, his light eyes moving between hers before dropping to her mouth. “And now, you are a potential Jedi,” he murmured and his face became blank, his jaw shifting. “It’s quite a change from scavenging on a desert planet.”

                The humiliation within rose so completely that Rey believed everyone in the room could feel it in that moment. She looked back toward the General, a blush rising in her cheeks, her fingers curling in distractedly.

                Leia stiffened where she stood with the admirals before slowly turning to search the room. She met the General’s eyes and held her stare for a breath, her pulse beginning to quicken. Could she feel her mortification even from there?

                Leia’s eyes darted to Cam’s back just as he also turned to look toward the General and her group of admirals.

                “Oh,” he said quietly, running his eyes over the figures surrounding Leia. “There’s my mother now.”

                Feeling the insistent heat in her cheeks, Rey jumped to her feet, again stumbling on those disastrous heels. “You know, I think I’m actually quite tired. I’ve had four of these glasses and… i-it was probably too much. I’m sorry that I won’t be able to stay-” she began, looking down toward Cam.

                The General took a step in their direction, her lips parting, her brow lifting in confusion.

                Cam whirled back to face her and also stood to his feet, hovering over her. “Wait, I-”

                Shaking her head, Rey was already moving, tossing a glance over her shoulder back toward him. “I’m sorry, Cam. Good night! I hope you enjoy at least some of the party!”

                Tripping, she finally tossed the shoes off, glancing toward the General blindly as the older woman watched from the center of the room, flanked by the admirals. Shaking her head inwardly, Rey stooped to pick up the heels and rose, casting one last look toward Cam who stood awkwardly at the table still. Then with a tight smile, she turned and hurried off, her cheeks burning.

                She moved quickly down the long corridor toward the lift, darting around party-goers where they stood in couples and groups, the dress bunched up in her hand to allow her legs a bit more freedom. With each step, she felt the redness slip from her face and cheeks, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly but saw no one following as she reached the lift and called for it.

                There was a heaviness in the air around her, and in the silence of the corridor she suddenly seemed to feel something else, almost a presence that she couldn’t place but somehow recognized. Grimacing, she jabbed at the button for the lift again, feeling the mortification rise within her once more, this time directed at herself.

                How easily she had allowed herself to be embarrassed by her past, to be shamed by it. Cam had probably meant nothing with his words but it had somehow been enough to send her into flight. What was happening to her, she wondered with the smallest vestiges of humiliation still deep within. Bowing her head, she felt a curl of her hair bounce along her cheek and swiped it away as she realized that the semi-elaborate hairdo had begun to come apart in her departure.

                The lift came, the doors sliding open. Moving in, she sighed silently and hit the button before turning to face outward again to the head of the corridor and the main room with the festivities.

                Cam hesitated in the doorway, his figure a dark silhouette as he hovered, a hand lifting to run through his hair uncomfortably.

                But Rey merely watched as the door closed at last, separating them. And only then, in the quiet of the lift, did she stumble on sore feet to the back of the elevator and bump her spine along its surface, her head falling back wearily.

 

                She went to sleep that night distracted. There was a current of anger in her head; confusing, unwelcome. It was different from the embarrassment she was still wrestling with, a definitive spike of fury lacing it.

                Traversing the long hallways dejectedly, the lights humming overhead as she had made her way to her room, she found the emotion becoming stronger, so much that she felt as if she suffocated, _drowned,_ in it. The heaviness she had felt only seemed to get worse with each step and she swiped her hand to grant her access to her room almost desperately as if her quarters could somehow contain both the anger and the embarrassment.

                Once inside, the doors sliding shut behind her heaving figure, she looked around her room as if expecting to encounter something out of place. But in the darkness, she saw nothing unfamiliar and blinked, her fingers releasing the shoes numbly, the heels clattering and echoing in the silence.

                _He’s livid tonight. Mad. At the end,_ she suddenly whispered to herself. _At the end of his rope._

                She shook her head roughly at the thought, attempting to center herself. There was no him, no _his_. Her visitor in the night didn’t exist. She had created him somehow; either from traits of men in the Resistance base or she had seen him elsewhere and had dreamed him almost to life. There was no real person to be angry, to be so wrathful. _She_ was angry. _She_ was irritated. _She_ was panicking. There was no dream lover just as she had overreacted to poor Cam, leaving him alone at the party when all he had asked for was company for a few minutes before returning to his duties. In fact, the more she thought of it, the more foolish she felt. She hadn’t even known which of the two women with the General had been the mother he had spoken of.

                “He must think I am the strangest girl in the galaxy now,” she whispered, lifting a hand to her face wearily. It didn’t matter anyway, though. She would most likely never see him again.         She just needed to go to sleep. Tomorrow would be another day and meditation would right everything, set her straight.

                Everything made sense in the sunlight if she could just draw away from the haziness between her dreams and its temptations.

                With a firm nod to herself, she quickly undressed, hanging the long beautiful dress aside and out of the way where nothing would damage it. Slipping the pins from her loosening hairdo, she felt her tresses come down and she dragged a hand through them, massaging the aches at her scalp and sighing when the weight fell away. She could smell the washes and oils that she and the General had used when styling her hair earlier and the scents now helped calm her. Feeling her body finally begin to loosen somewhat, she went to the refresher to shower. She needed a long, hot, water shower to ease the sore muscles in her legs and feet though she pinned her hair up and away once more. She found herself liking the way her locks curled and waved, feeling them wind around her fingers softly. She didn’t wish to wash them out so quickly.

                After her normal nightly routine, she paused by one of the portholes in her ceiling and looked up and out, seeing the bright mood overhead.

                _What a strange night_ , she thought wearily.

                And when she slid under her covers and stretched luxuriously across her stomach, bare skin and nude form against soft sheets, she was asleep within moments of her head hitting the pillow.

 

                He had come tonight.

                Her eyes came open, fluttering as she felt him move in the moonlit darkness of her room. Turning her head along the surface of her bed, she caught sight of his tall form and watched him over the curve of her shoulder, lying face down still.

                His shadow was hovering before the dress she had worn earlier and she frowned slightly as her eyes slid down to his hands at his sides. Even in shadow, she could quite clearly see the clenched fists.

                He lifted a fist, uncurling his fingers to trail them over the folds gathered below the empire waistline, and his touch was surprisingly gentle. But as she spoke quietly, he drew back from the dress and turned his head toward her.

                She knew that profile even if she could see nothing else of his face in the dim light. “You’re very angry tonight,” she murmured tiredly, her words soft. “Is it because of me?”

                He did not respond though he did pull away from the dress to shift toward the foot of her bed where she could no longer see him. Her eyes slid closed once more; she was so tired in that moment, ready to fall back to sleep.

                But then his hands were on her, pressing to the back of her ankles before sliding up slowly along her calves.

                Sighing, she gave herself over to his caress as he trailed his fingers along the back of her knees and then stroked them, tracing those sensitive spots lightly. She was on her stomach, nude under her thin blanket, but he had already pushed the sheet up along her legs as his hands had traveled.

                “Will you remain angry tonight?” she whispered into her bed, her eyes fluttering against the soft surface, her arms curled up around her head.

                His hands slid back down to her ankles, wrapping long fingers around them. And then his grip on her tightened and he pulled her down along the bed with one hard yank.

                She cried out in surprise, coming fully awake in her dream, her hands immediately reaching for purchase as she was hauled to the edge of the bed. Releasing her ankles, his hands were on her once more a moment later, wrapping around the span of her hips with long, clawed fingers and lifting them off the surface to him. His fingertips bit into the skin over her pelvic bones, pushing in tightly to the point of pain.

                With a quick breath, she pressed a hand to the bed beneath her hip, her arm brushing his fingers as she encountered him there, her other hand reaching blindly across the mattress for some kind of support.

                He shifted onto the bed behind her and she was acutely aware then that he was nude; she felt the smooth skin of his hips, the jutting edges of his bones against her. His erection pressing into her thigh. And she breathed tremulously as he pulled her legs apart from behind, as one of his hands trailed to her tailbone and then slid up across her back to her shoulder achingly, reaching. “You were beautiful tonight,” he whispered in that familiar voice of his; low, intense. “Every night. Since we first met.”

                She arched into his touch, her body moving of its own accord even as she knew somewhere deep inside that she had never lain with anyone, had never bedded anyone. “I-“

                “I know,” he said softly in a deep, mournful tone. “I know.”

                His hand released her hip as the other wrapped around her shoulder, clamping down. Then the hand drifted low, sliding over the curve of her rear and dipping toward her core, sinking in from behind.

                She started, her entire body stiffening at his touch, her arm straining under her weight on the bed.

                He stroked her gently, running over her before plunging in deep, driving long fingers into her to caress her, to widen her.

                She frowned at how strange it felt, at how he stretched her, her lips parting to release a soft moan.

                He bent low over her, his chest pressing to her back, hard muscle to smooth flesh and fluid curves. His mouth lowered to her shoulder, his tongue flicking out to taste her as if he needed the salt of her, the very memory of her. “I need you. Now. Tonight,” he whispered into the soft skin of her shoulder, his breath warming her.

                She could only nod and whimper as he pushed his fingers deep within her at his words.

                He pulled away from her back, straightening along her hips, running his fingers over her and moistening his hand in her wetness. His hand strummed her expertly, his other one holding her tightly, pressing her to the bed.

                Rey grimaced, reaching achingly, her hands digging into the mattress, giving herself over to his touch.

                Withdrawing wet fingers from her, he pulled back from her slightly, allowing cool air to kiss her skin.

                She didn’t like the cool air. She liked _him_ , wanted _him_ , his sharp angles at her back, his heat when he climbed on top of her and overcame her.

                Then she felt something else rub along her lips, something hard with a thick head and she understood what was about to happen.

                Even as she stiffened in expectation, she felt that velvety head press into her, breaching the barrier that she had only recently allowed him to penetrate with his fingers. Now, bent over for him to do with as he wanted, she found herself searching for a safe hold, for protection from the unknown.

                He dipped low once more, his lips brushing the skin of her back, trailing upward to nestle into her neck. “I can’t hurt you. I _won’t_ ,” he murmured, his voice low, reverberating exquisitely through her body.

                “Then don’t,” she said back to him in a whisper.

                He ducked his head, pressing his forehead into her hair, her neck. “No,” he promised.

                And he pushed into her carefully, releasing himself to lift his hand to her hip and latching on.

                It was a strange sensation; half pressure, one part pain. One part necessity, absolute need. She turned her head, pressing her forehead into the bed to breathe, to try to understand. He stretched her as he moved, his voice almost raspy as he breathed a soft groan into her neck. She echoed his breath, gasping as he pushed into her slowly, carefully; as he pulled out and then returned to push further, to ask her to take more of him. It was easier now, this second push, for he was wet with her, was hard but smooth. Her hand pushed into the bed at her hip for support, her arm brushing his fingers.

                Even as he carefully penetrated her, he released her hip to grasp her wrist, to gently lift it and slide it up beside her shoulder. “I won’t hurt you,” he said again.

                She nodded into her bed, curling her other arm down to mirror her first, dragging them close to her body as she allowed him to move.

                His hand returned to her hip, fingers shifting, almost tickling. And suddenly he was seated entirely within her, his hips pressed to her rear, his hardness so thick inside of her that she was sure she couldn’t have taken anymore even if he’d had more to give.

                He pressed his mouth to her shoulder, lips trailing as he pulled out.

                His withdrawal almost made her sit up in protest.

                But then he was pushing in again, returning to her, and a silent moan hummed in her mouth, her eyes slipping shut. He filled her so completely that she didn’t understand how she had lived before without him fitting her as perfectly as he did.

                _Just tell me who you are._

                She made a soft sound as he pulled out once more, as he withdrew enough to leave the head of his manhood just inside of her before pushing back in, harder now. The gesture pushed her into the bed, her breath catching at the sensation. He repeated the motion, pulling out before thrusting in, settling and running his hand from her hip over her smooth back blindly.

                “Am I too rough?” he asked, his voice tight, his words straining.

                She roused from her trance, shaking her head weakly. “No. No,” she whispered. “It feels…”

               He inhaled tremulously, brushing another kiss to her back, to the nape of her neck as he dragged his thumb along her skin immediately after. “I know how it feels,” he murmured, his breath warm, a caress in itself. He groaned faintly, sending shivers through her skin, throughout her entire body to know that she wasn’t the only one unbalanced. “I can feel it from you.”

                She frowned slightly though, her mouth curving as he pulled out once more and then thrust back in, his chest to her back, his hips shoving her into her bed. “H-how? How?” And she cried out as the pressure became something more, something pleasurable. Something she needed. “ _Oh_ -“

                “I know,” he whispered, now taking up a rhythm, pulling out and thrusting back in, his hips meeting her rear with each pump. “I… _damn it-“_

                Rey turned her head from the bed, her hand reaching upward blindly.

                He buried his face into her neck, his hips pushing her into the bed with each thrust, but he groaned deeply against her ear as she found his face, as she buried her fingers into her hair and then pulled.

                His thrusts became harder, his hand leaving her shoulder to dig into her bed, the other releasing her hip to mirror the first.

                Rey found herself encased by his massive form, almost buried under him as he allowed his weight to settle on her. And then he thrust into her earnestly, pushing into her and shoving himself to her very limits, grasping for more. She cried out, her voice falling into a moan as he overwhelmed her, as he drew close to her and pushed into her back, her body, wrapping around her desperately.

                He touched something inside of her that she didn’t understand, couldn’t grasp. But she would be damned before she stopped him or broke their spell; his heat, the heaviness of his body was enough for her. She could stay there forever and never regret again. She turned her lips into her bed, her fist dragging in to press to her mouth as she suppressed her voice at his thrusts. She wanted to let it ring out clearly at every pulse of his hips but she feared her cries would ring out in the waking world as well, alerting everyone on her floor as to exactly what kind of dream she was currently having.

                His hand took hold of hers and yanked it away as he shoved into her, pushing his hips even further in an attempt to have more of her. “I want to hear you,” he groaned against her jaw, his fingers clawing around hers and dragging them close to her breast. “I want to hear you.”

                She felt a moan leave her mouth, grimacing at the ache, at the pure pleasure running through her.

                His hand left hers pressed to her chest, lifting to take hold of her chin.

                She was completely overpowered by him, buried under him, but she exhaled desperately as he turned her face to his, as he stole a kiss from her and then asked for more, demanding her tongue. She gave what she could, wanting more of him as well even as he worshipped her body, as he drove her further, higher.

                “I can’t. I _can’t_ -“

               “Yes, you can,” he whispered, taking her mouth again, taking her body with each thrust of his hips, his hardness sliding into her easily now.

                She broke from his kiss, her lips parting at the oncoming rise in her. She tightened around him, holding him deep inside of her body and bringing him to stiffen almost painfully against her slender figure.

                He cursed roughly and dropped his forehead into her back, his body curling around hers as he shoved his hips against her rear, as he attempted to unite himself with her just that little bit more.

                Her hand tightened back into a fist against her collarbone as his thrusts pushed her into the bed, as she felt her orgasm near. “Just tell me who you are,” she whispered, grimacing as her pelvis trembled from need. She was so close somehow, but not in the way she was accustomed to at this point. This was something new, different; just as powerful though, even stronger. “ _Please_. Please-“

                His thrusts pushed her over and for a moment she thought she was alone until he also stopped rigidly, his body so close she was sure that he could bury her under his weight. A pained shout broke from her as her climax washed over her, her body stiffening and clamping down on him buried deep inside.

                He also peaked, his arms hardening on either side of her form, clutching her close as he trembled.

                She was never going to come back down, she realized as her entire body quivered from her release. This was not the climax she was familiar with; it was deeper, bone deep, overpowering. Her entire pelvis refused to function, frozen in pure ecstasy, still clenched around him.

                He was all muscle and tightness at her back, his forehead pressing into her back heavily as he came inside of her, as he almost crushed her from the strength of his embrace.

                The orgasm brought her hips and thighs to quiver with bottomless quakes under his weight and she felt herself make a soft, plaintive cry as she shook, minute shivers trembling throughout her body and around him buried deep inside of her.

                He let out a small sound, halfway between a curse and a groan, and his hand slipped low to clasp her hip beneath his, attempting to settle her futilely.

                It wasn’t going to work, she realized, her brow turning up helplessly. Merely keeping him inside of her, feeling him shift or twitch the smallest bit sent shivers through her, caused her to spark. She pressed her forehead back down to the bed as she breathed, as she whimpered faintly.

                At her back, he moved the tiniest bit, turning his face to lay his hard cheekbone and jaw on her shoulder and exhaling wearily.

                There was something about that exhalation that centered her, that awakened her. Bringing her own breathing back down at last, she slipped from her forehead onto her cheek as well so that she faced the same direction he did, so that she almost breathed the same air as him. “W-what is it?” she asked him in a whisper.

                He didn’t respond. Instead, his fingers lifted along her hip, trailing upward, butterfly wings fluttering up her side.

                But now she felt unsettled. Something had fallen over their silence, had stolen their moment from them, had made the room cold. “Tell me,” she said and her voice was stronger but still hesitant. “Tell me.”

                The man at her back hesitated for a small moment. Then he pressed the smallest of kisses to her back, brushing his lips upward as he lifted his weight off her.

                She immediately felt the cool air around their bodies, the separation between them, and she detested it. Frowning, still trembling from the small shivers of her climax, she cast her eyes over her shoulder toward him but couldn’t meet his gaze as he hovered in shadow.

                But his words caused ice to spike clear through her; the heaviness of his tone, the deepness of his voice.

                The resolute firmness to be found there.

                “I am coming for you.”

               

                Rey felt herself come awake. His words had been a nudge, a push, and she found herself not so much awakening as being shoved into the waking world roughly. Her eyes snapped open, her body starting, and she was on her stomach still but the pillow was under her cheek, the sunlight peeking down into her quarters. Ribbons of pink and yellow, pale clouds. Her eyelids fluttered in the hazy light, in the sudden realization that she was awake, that she had dreamed again.

                But this was different.

                She grimaced slightly, turning her face from the morning light, and shifted.

                Her pelvis thrummed, her core slick enough that she felt sticky between her thighs. Her lips parted as the smallest tremors ran through her, figments of her dream, of her climax. Moaning under her breath, she carefully rolled onto her back and felt suddenly sore between her legs, throbbing.

                It wasn’t possible. She hadn’t physically slept with anyone.

                But as she settled, falling limply to the mattress, she felt a sigh of contentment leave her throat as her body purred deliciously, as she felt the pale vestiges of her orgasm deep inside still.

                Her next dream of him would never top this one, she knew. But she looked forward to being proven wrong.

 

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Eleven: **

He was going to bring Finn down to the cells to have him confront his fears at last, to make him see that, of the people piloting these ships, not one of them was Kylo Ren. That Kylo Ren was dead and gone and had been for the last six months. He was going to make Finn see so that the former stormtrooper could finally stop waking from nightmares in Poe’s bed, half scrambling in terror.

He was going to finally overcome his fears.

He was mistaken.

 


	12. Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven:

 

                If the days and nights before the celebration had been filled with irritation and blossoming anger, Rey was surprised to feel the utter calm that fell over her that morning and onward. She showered, dressed, composed herself after the night’s dream and consoled her growling stomach long enough to skip down to the mess hall for breakfast.

                As usual, Finn was at the far table with Poe and she cast a small smile in their direction as she grabbed a tray and went to each and every food station. She had been slacking lately in her workouts and wasn’t burning enough to make up for the food she was inhaling. But, _damn_ , if she wasn’t content with everything as it was.

                Finn caught sight of her on the line as she finished piling some dessert fruits on her tray. Lifting a hand, he waved her over, causing Poe to glance toward her over his shoulder and toss her a quick smile.

                She returned a wry shake of her head to his gesture and then carefully balanced her tray across the large room to meet them. Coming up next to Finn, she slid in beside him at the table as he scooted over. “Good morning.”

                “Good morning to you,” Poe replied and he arched his brows at her tray. “This is more than usual, isn’t it?” he inquired, a half devoured apple hanging in his grip as he motioned to her pile of food.

                “Yes, it is,” she chirped, separating plates and dishes around and across the tray.

                “What’s the occasion?” Finn asked, reaching toward a fruit that resembled an orange curiously.

                Rey tapped the back of his hand with her fork, causing him to recoil. “No occasion. I’m just hungry,” she remarked, jabbing at the air between them with the utensil threateningly.

                “You’re always hungry,” Finn said with a stiff lip.

                Poe leaned across the table and laid a hand on the former stormtrooper’s shoulder. “Leave her alone. Hunger will claim the best of us.”

                With a small tilt to her head, Rey dug into her main course. “And hunger has.”

                “Chipper but dangerous. Interesting combination,” Finn stated with a firm nod before turning back to his own breakfast. “How did you sleep?”

                Rey immediately choked on her food. “S-sorry?” she asked, coughing around a chunk of something caught in her throat.

                Poe reached around the edge of the table to smack her on the back roughly. “You okay?”

                Nodding and blinking back tears, Rey gagged for another moment before finally dislodging the piece of food and swallowing it down properly. “Y-yeah, yes. I’m okay, I’m good,” she wheezed and she reached out as Finn slid a cup of water her way. Guzzling it down, she finally inhaled deeply and began to settle. “Sorry, don’t know what happened there,” she rasped. Turning back to Finn, she grimaced. “What did you ask me?”

                Finn shrugged. “I just asked how you slept.”

                She nodded again, bobbing her head up and down. “Good. Good. I slept well, thanks,” she answered.

                The last thing she wanted to tell them was that she’d had a dream in which she had lost her virginity to a shadowy figure that visited her almost nightly, constantly. A figure that she was almost positive existed and not a manifestation of her anger.

                She reminded herself to thank Luke soon for _that_ idea.

                “That’s…good, then,” Finn said slowly but casting a quick glance toward Poe who merely shrugged back at him imperceptibly. “Poe mentioned that you had orders today to go out?”

                Rey looked at Poe and blinked. “Do I?” she asked, a piece of fruit halfway to her mouth.

                Poe nodded with a small wince. “You do. You’re part of the convoy heading out with the General. She’s meeting with a few officials that didn’t make it to the party last night. Seems there was a meeting after the party and some of the information needs to be shared with the others. So you will be part of the escort.”

                Rey hesitated. “Are you going, too?” she asked.

                He shook his head. “No, I have a few classes to give today, flight simulations to the new group, so I’m stuck here. I was supposed to tell you last night but you disappeared at one point and the General said that you had already retired for the night.” He shrugged. “We also have new personnel coming in from D’Qar so I was asked to escort them around the base to acquaint them with their work stations. Should be an easy day all around, just busy.”

                “Why you?” Finn asked him with a frown.

                “Captain is going to be running a few strategies and simulations for most of the day so the General asked me to do it. One of the new guys is the son of an admiral.” His eyebrows jumped up. “He’s supposed to be working with security and containment.”

                “So they got the best to show him around,” Finn said with a smile.

                Poe shrugged again though he also smiled at his words. “I just hope he knows how boring that position is going to be here. How often do we use the containment fields?” He waved a hand dismissively in response to his own question.

                Looking down at her food, Rey nodded. “True. Okay, so what time does the General need me to be ready for?” she asked, wondering if she would have the time to even finish breakfast.

                “You all depart at noon.”

                More than enough time. “Okay, then once I finish eating I’ll skip back to my quarters and freshen up before reporting,” she said.

                With a nod, Poe dug into his apple once more as Rey and Finn tucked back into their breakfasts.

 

                It was a bit after noon that the convoy departed bearing the General in the main ship. Rey was manning an X-wing for the trip, having cast her eyes on the Millennium Falcon where it rested silently to a corner of the hangar bay. She adored that old craft and it was no surprise that the General now viewed the Falcon as belonging to Rey. When she had gone to Ahch-To to find Luke, she had traveled in that vessel; ever since, there had been very few reasons to take it anywhere as there were still some people in the galaxy that could recognize it as the ship belonging to the infamous smuggler Han Solo. Better for the ship to remain hidden away until there was a reason to call it back into service.

                Boarding the X-wing, Rey powered the ship up, flashing Poe a thumbs up as he smacked the side of the ship in farewell and pulled out of range. Opening the communications channel, she found herself falling into line for takeoff and then getting into formation once the main ship carrying the General was in the air.

                From there on out, it would be clear skies and hopefully some smooth flying.

 

                Finn was outside by the Takodana woods when Poe came for him.

                First Order ships were entering the atmosphere, the Black Squadron leader had shouted, motioning Finn back in frantically.

                Finn had immediately raced back across the landing strip, his heart leaping into his throat. This was the absolute last thing he needed, he thought, as he had ducked under Poe’s arm, as if the pilot could somehow protect him from a fleet of ships coming to take aim and destroy. Nonetheless, he raced with Poe still covering him back into the hangar bays until Poe had basically ordered him onto the lift. He had fought the pilot for all of two seconds but Poe always seemed to be able to win arguments with him; it honestly confused him how easily he did it.

                “Just go,” Poe had whispered to him, shaking his head.

                Staring at him, Finn had felt himself nod before entering the lift and being carried away, the doors sliding shut on Poe as the pilot had also nodded reassuringly.

                And he had been brought down to the lower levels where the command center rested, to wait the attack out.

                It was almost as if the First Order had known that the General and the only Force Sensitive in the Resistance, besides the elusive Luke Skywalker, had left the base.

 

                By the time the ships had entered the atmosphere, there had been no point in mounting an air strike. They were already here circling overhead, firing at their hangar bays and X-wings still stationed on the ground, but Poe had still commanded the squadrons to mount their X-wings and take off, reading off defensive positions and offensive tactics.

                He wondered later why it had been so easy to take the main TIE ship down; why the others, small in number, had fallen just as easily. All of the squadron pilots and ships survived the attack but as he landed his X-wing down, climbing out of his ship, he frowned as Resistance members had captured and brought back the stormtrooper pilots.

                Stormtroopers didn’t normally pilot TIE fighters. Bucketheads did.

                And then the prize; the large black TIE Silencer was shot down deep in the Takodana woods and he had gone with that search party, his protective instincts raised to their max. He was going to find the pilot of that ship as he was the leader in this attack, and he was going to bring him back to the base and toss him in a force field cell to await interrogation.

                He was going to bring Finn down to the cells to have him confront his fears at last, to make him see that, of the people piloting these ships, not one of them was Kylo Ren. That Kylo Ren was dead and gone and had been for the last six months. He was going to make Finn see so that the former stormtrooper could finally stop waking from nightmares in Poe’s bed, half scrambling in terror.

                He was going to finally overcome his fears.

 

                He was mistaken.

                Coming out onto the edge of the destruction caused by the crash of the TIE Silencer, Poe frowned at the minimal damage the ship seemed to have taken. The wings were still intact, the twin ion drive still glowing though the light weakened and then faded into darkness. Turning, he meant to motion to a squad of Resistance members but as he lifted his hand, he hesitated.

                No. _No_. He was going to do this himself; he would lead the group himself.

                And motioning instead for the group to flank him, he carefully scaled the edge of the slight cliff and lowered himself into the ravine that the crashing ship had caused. The ground was still hot from the crash, the heat lifting off the sleek edges and surfaces of the TIE Silencer as it awaited them.

                A hiss came from the ship, the sound of something shifting and sliding. And then a black-garbed figure disembarked from the Silencer, toppling to his knees on the hard ground limply.

                Poe slid to a stop and stared, gesturing for the group behind him to halt as well.

                Lifting his black and chrome helmet, Kylo Ren merely looked over toward him for a long moment before he fell to the floor wordlessly, seemingly unconscious.

                And it still took Poe Dameron long, unbroken moments to even react, to approach.

                “Shit,” he whispered.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Twelve: **

“Finn, let him go! He’s not a prisoner! _He’s not a prisoner!_ ” And she sprang from the chair and was already hopping up out of the ship to disembark as the overhead shielding slid open, as Finn’s voice followed her from the console.

“Rey! _Rey-_ “

 _“It’s a trap!”_ she cried back as she ran. “He’s not a prisoner! _He let himself be captured!”_

 

 


	13. Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve:

 

                Six TIE fighters had been part of the attack fleet along with the large black TIE Silencer. The six stormtrooper pilots had been captured as had the person leading them.

                Kylo Ren.

                It was the leader of the group that currently stood comatose before them in the chamber, hovering within the blue-lit interrogation field tube. He had been quite unconscious when Poe had finally worked up the nerve to approach his still figure in the Takodana woods and he had been so for hours now.

                What a rude awakening he would have soon enough, Poe thought grimly.

               The door swished open behind him and he merely caught a glimpse of the figure from the corner of his eye before recognizing it to be Finn. Immediately turning, he stopped him in mid-leap, pushing him backward and already shushing him as Finn began to flail.

                “How is he alive?” Finn demanded, motioning and shouting, his entire figure stiff. “How? _Why_?”

                “I don’t know. I don’t know,” Poe responded calmly, his voice low and level, his hands lifting to stop the former stormtrooper. “I don’t know, Finn. But we’re not going to stay here. Let’s go into the observation room and we can talk there.” And he sighed, lifting his palm to his face wearily. “Damn, and I just finished telling that kid Cam, the new guy in charge of the containment fields, that we never have things like this happen. What a way to make a liar out of me.”

                Finn turned and stormed off, his steps loud, echoing in the hallway. But his anger had slipped away like water through a sieve when Poe caught up with him in the observation room, a large room with a sheet of transparisteel that looked out into the chamber they had just exited. He had finally managed to get a good look at what exactly met his eyes in the interrogation chamber. “What the hell is this?” Finn asked hoarsely as he stared at the knight hovering in the tube of blue light, held in magnetic cuffs, his form seemingly unconscious.

                “Geonosian containment field,” Poe replied, his brow drawn low as they observed the prisoner from outside of the room, the two-way glass their only means of looking into the room.

                _“I know what it is!”_ Finn shouted and he stopped, reeling himself in. “The First Order had those on StarKiller base. But that…that was outlawed,” he stated and he turned to Poe, anger on his face. “We don’t do this, Poe. We’re better than this-“

                “We need this,” Poe shot back at him and, pausing to compose himself as well, he lifted his hand and pointed out through the window into the cell where the knight stood imprisoned. “We need this specific device to _hold_ him. He is a Force Sensitive. The only way we can hold him is if we keep him in there. That field interrupts his connection to the Force, it’s the only way we can keep him submissive. It’s that or we turn him loose and even then, he knows exactly where to find us! At this point, we’re just waiting to hear back from the General because we’re going to have to _leave_ this base. I’ve already spoken with the captain in charge and we’re ordering ships to begin evacuating this base, to take refuge at D’Qar in the meantime. We-“

                “Poe,” Finn said slowly, carefully, gauging the pilot’s reaction. “We can’t do this. And _I’m_ saying this. _I_ am. _That_ man-“ And he also turned to point out into the containment room angrily toward the knight of Ren hovering in the interrogation field, “is the reason that I can’t sleep at night. You know this. _You know this_!” he shouted at him vehemently, his gestures furious. “You wake _up_ with me! I can’t sleep an entire night through and I always screw up your sleep, too! But this…” He turned to look toward Kylo Ren in the containment field, shaking his head as he merely stared at him, as his arm dropped back at his side wearily. “This is wrong. This is…this is torture.”

                Poe merely stared out into the room, his jaw hard. “Oh, I know all about torture, Finn,” he growled at the former stormtrooper. “And trust me, not yet, this isn’t,” he stated and he spun away, leaving the room in cold fury.

                “Poe!” Finn shouted after him but he didn’t bother following, throwing his arms into the air and stopping in exasperation as he turned to look back toward the prisoner.

 

                In the end, it was not Poe to interrogate Kylo Ren though he did return to the observation room to watch over the questioning with Finn at his side. The deed had been left to a captain currently on the base and he stood surrounded on all sides of the room by security within the Resistance base, all personnel armed with weapons at the ready.

                When Kylo Ren did awaken, he had already been stripped of his helmet. His pale face lifted and he immediately struggled, his arms shifting in the containment field, his eyes darting down to the magnetic cuffs. Catching sight of them, he stared for a long moment before seeming to snort at their presence, his eyes lifting to survey the room.

                “And here we are,” he murmured with a shake of his head.

                The captain stepped forward, his brusque voice carrying across the room as he looked up at the First Order Commander. “You are being held for interrogation. I will ask you questions and you are to answer them. If you refuse, we will use whatever means necessary to secure those answers from you. Do you understand these terms?”

                The knight bowed his head to return the hard glare, his tall form hovering in the blue light, his feet hanging off the bottom of the field. “By ‘ _whatever means necessary_ ’…do you mean torture?” he questioned silkily, his head tilting curiously.

                “By whatever means necessary,” the captain repeated stonily.

                Kylo Ren’s lips tightened, his dark eyes shifting downward as he nodded within the interrogation field. “Then…let us begin, yes?”

                And he looked down once more, his blank face taking in the glow of the magnetic cuffs on his wrists as they flared.

 

                “What were you thinking?” Rey demanded as her borrowed X-wing touched down, winds blowing fiercely under her descent.

                She glanced toward the squadron leader to her right as he landed his X-Wing at the end of the Resistance base landing strip, his gestures manic. Her own hands flew across the piloting console expertly, bringing the engines down to a low hum, knowing she would need to slowly calm them before being able to shut the craft down completely. The ship would need vast tune-ups and she suspected the mechanics on the base would see it immediately once she put the work orders in and left the ship in the hangar bay.

                She realized she had tuned out half of Finn’s response as he had begun to speak from his image on the small screen on her dash. It was due to her inability to focus fully lately because of those damn dreams, because of the anger. “Wait, what?” she questioned distractedly before coming back to the situation at hand and feeling the unease rise inside of her again. “No! You should’ve told me!”

                “This was _not_ my call,” Finn stated as her craft finally powered down into silence. “You know I have _no_ say over _anything_ that goes on here, and Poe went and-“

                “The General, then,” she snapped irritably, flicking off switches and lowering levers back to their starting positions. “Though I’m not sure that’s the best call on her part, either-“

               “It wasn’t her call! She was with you!” Finn shouted, his image garbling onscreen for a moment that she wasn’t sure she had heard correctly.

                “What?”

                The squadron leader’s orange and white uniformed figure jumped down and came running from his X-Wing, motioning to base crew to look after his prized craft as he raced across the landing strip and passed right by her in her own X-wing, not slowing down in the least as he disappeared within the base.

                “It wasn’t the General’s call, either,” Finn repeated from her console.

                She blinked rapidly, frowning, before finally stopping and settling in her seat. Turning back around to stare at Finn’s tense face in her monitor in confusion, she paused, her heart beginning to race as fast as the squadron leader had when he had streaked past her. “Finn, what do you mean it wasn’t the General’s call? Didn’t you _talk_ to her before doing this?” she demanded. And her hand suddenly streaked to her face, smacking into the helmet she forgot that she still wore, as it all clicked into place. All of it. The news of the capture, of the win, the revelries in knowing that the Resistance had dealt the First Order yet one more blow in their attempt to cripple them by not only surviving an assault but also capturing their prized knight, the same monster that she had thought long dead, left behind in that snowy landscape of StarKiller. “Wait. No. _No_. No, no, no-“

                “Yes,” Finn replied wearily. “The General’s coming in with you but she’s only now being filled in. She was out of communications with us while she was gone, you all were! And I don’t think she’s happy-“

                _“Let him go!”_ Rey shouted frantically and she began to unbuckle the restraints, fumbling with them when they wouldn’t give, when they wouldn’t release her. Finally freeing herself from the pilot seat desperately, she flung the restraints aside, her pulse pounding in her ears, her heart threatening to break free of her chest. Reaching up wildly, she yanked the helmet off and tossed it aside, indifferent as to where it landed in the small compartment. “Finn, let him go! He’s not a prisoner! _He’s not a prisoner!_ ” And she sprang from the chair and was already hopping up out of the ship to disembark as the overhead shielding slid open, as Finn’s voice followed her from the console.

                “Rey! _Rey-_ “

                _“It’s a trap!”_ she cried back as she ran. “He’s not a prisoner! _He let himself be captured!”_

 

                As the explorer landed, the General immediately disembarked, racing. “Where is he?” she demanded of the nearest pilot. He merely shook his head causing her to push past him and run toward the lifts of the base. “Where is he?”

                As the doors slid open to admit her, she was met by Jessika, the young female pilot, almost hopping with excitement.

                _“Where is he?”_ the General demanded once more, now frantic.

                The excitement left the girl’s face. “H-he’s below. In containment,” she replied hesitantly, her wide eyes confused.

                “We need to move him! Now!” Leia shouted and she motioned for several guards to follow her with a sweep of her hand.

                Jessika fell into step behind her as the older woman hurried down the corridors toward the lift. “Everything is fine! He’s not nearly as strong as we thought. I mean, we held him in the containment field for a bit but he didn’t give us anything so he was moved to the containment cells and we don’t have guards posted in case he decides to whammy them with the Force. But we can keep working on him, make him-“

                Leia whirled on her, her wizened face falling still. “He’s already trapped us,” she whispered and she reached out in a sudden sharp movement, taking an extra blaster off one of the guards at her back and examining it hastily. “He trapped us all and we didn’t even know it. He planned it from the start-”

                And as the lift doors opened, the General darted sideways along the wall toward a small console with a latch. Flicking the latch open, she jammed her palm on the button within.

                A siren rose shrilly around them, deafening, bouncing off the walls. A moment later, the lights dimmed before abruptly flashing red, bathing them in the deep glow as the General moved back toward the lift and entered, flanked by guards.

                Jessika was left standing alone in the hallway, startled, as the lift doors closed behind the general.

 

                Racing, Rey tumbled out of the lift and took the corridor leading to the containment cells at a full sprint. She had stopped by her room along the way to snatch up Luke’s lightsaber and a part of her felt in that moment that she had done the right thing, that she would soon have need of it.

                Reaching the end of the corridor, she whirled as the lights overhead began to blink an eerie red glow, the alarms sounding off shrilly and causing her to grimace.          The corridors remained empty behind her though, the flashing lights throwing the hallways into broken and bloody blackness as they pulsed.

                With a shiver suddenly racing down her spine, Rey spun back around and waved her hand over the console, facing ahead. The doors slid open to admit her and she burst in, looking toward their large square cells, each containing a stormtrooper that had been captured from the foiled attack on the Resistance base. They remained unconscious in their respective chambers, the force field walls buzzing lightly though their sound was hampered by the high pitch of the siren.

                Turning her head, she looked toward the last cell in the line, the one she knew would house the Commander for the First Order. The red lights clashed with the pale blue force field containing him, sending the entire cell into an unnatural darkness from where she stood. With a heavy breath, Rey moved down the corridor toward the cell, the hair on her body suddenly rising.

                As she reached the cell, she leaned warily to look in before she stepped out fully in front of the force field.

                _By the Force…you really are alive._

                Inside the cell, the prisoner sat straight on the metal bench against the wall, his head held high. He had been stripped of his helmet before his interrogation in the containment field and now his pale face was the only visible thing in the darkness when the red lights blinked out, a long sliver of a scar biting into his forehead and clear down his cheek and jaw, disappearing within the high collar of his tunic. His form was still clothed entirely in his black uniform and as Rey came to stand tentatively outside the field encasing him in his prison, his dark eyes shifted to meet hers and held.

                She froze up so tightly she could barely breathe. Because it wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t _be_. She would not _allow_ it to be.

                _Please don’t let it be._

                She had thought him dead for the last six months, had put him behind her and had consoled Leia, had spoken to Luke concerning his nephew. How stupid of her, she realized now, the blood draining slowly out of her face, her entire body beginning to strain from such rigidity. How stupid of her to think that he would have perished that day. How stupid to think that she hadn’t somehow felt him in all this time when she was sure she had felt the spark of him just before boarding the Millennium Falcon and escaping the dying planet. How utterly foolish she had been this entire time.

                And now that she was staring at him, fully taking him in, she felt the second blow as it was dealt her, as she stared at him, as she ran her eyes over him. As she realized her heart had just taken the worst of the hit. All of this time, all of those nights dreaming of that man and all of those things she had felt-

                She suddenly wanted none of it. _She wanted none of it_. But the words still came to her, her brow drawing up, her body pulled tight as a bow ready to release an arrow.

                _It’s you._

                The two words raced through her head over and over, pounded against the walls of her mind, shrieking until it was all she heard. They blared louder than the alarms somehow, loud enough that she was almost deafened by her own inner voice.

                Kylo Ren’s face remained still, blank for a moment. Then, his eyes narrowing, coldness entered his expression, his brow drawing low over that black stare as his head bowed at the mere sight of her, the scar pulling.

                He hated her; she felt it deep inside, beating through her veins as strongly as her blood. He despised her in that moment, detested the very sight of her, the feeling almost primal. And it was a mirror of how he had treated her when she had begun to dream of him.

                Because this was the man she had continuously dreamt of.

                How? _How-?_

                He was exactly the man she dreamt of and she didn’t understand in that moment how she could have excluded him, how she hadn’t immediately placed him. She’d had a few nightmares of him numerous times but he had been larger in them somehow, _monstrous_. No. This couldn’t be the same man that she had dreamt off, she told herself painfully; the man that she had allowed into her bed and into her very body. She stared at him, feeling as if she didn’t even stand on solid ground anymore, as if they were no longer surrounded by prison cells. They were suddenly back on StarKiller, on Takodana, still caught up in battle, always battle. But it wasn’t this cold place, this dark hold. There was always color between them, the green trees, the blue of the cool wind, the white of the snow as they had fought. He had been a beast, but this man here-

                It was because she had thought him dead. It couldn’t have been him because he was supposed to be dead. And she was suddenly reminded of those strange, long looks that both Luke and Leia had given her; the searching and confused stares when she had made it seem that Ben Solo had died, when she had passed along her condolences.

                How similar they were in both expression and treachery.

                She winced, feeling an ache in her chest as she ran her gaze over Kylo Ren’s impassive form. She had never actually seen his face in her dreams, in the vague snippets she remembered, the flashes that streaked behind her closed eyes at the most inopportune times. She had most especially never seen that sliver of a scar on his face, arcing down from his brow to the hollow of his cheek, though she remembered putting it there. But she had felt it _and_ him; his hands on her, his hard arms, the warmth of his chest under her lips. The deep bite of the scar under her fingers as she had caressed his face. The shiver of his mouth across her skin. The heat they had created together. How? How could she know how he felt as if she’d had him already in daylight? How could she have felt that deep scar if she had never seen it on him, had thought him dead this entire time? She felt then as if she dreamed still and as she stared at him, she could almost believe that he had been in her dreams with her as well, had been a willing participant instead of being dreamed into existence.

                As if she hadn’t just dreamed him, but he had dreamed her as well.

                But then her eyes came back to his face and registered the animosity there and she realized how wrong she was. The man in that cell had no love for her. He hated her to her core and she felt the waves of anger coming off his black form even then as they merely stared at each other, the alarms blaring around them, the red lights continuously flashing overhead.

                Her heart pulsed painfully in her chest, threatening to break the walls of her breastbone. Blindly, almost frantically, her hand darted up to encounter the lightsaber at her hip, nestled in the case holding it along her belt. She needed to put it to an end, needed to wipe the dreams from her mind, the very feel of him from her body.

                Kylo Ren’s eyes darted to the saber momentarily before shifting back up to meet her glare.

                Rey took a step back, her breathing uneven, her hand settling protectively over the hilt of the weapon. And as she retreated from the force field wall, she caught the sudden movement in the cell beside the knight’s.

                The unconscious stormtrooper in the cell next to Kylo Ren’s was shifting, seemed to be coming awake.

                She watched as he sat up and she felt herself go rigid as she stared, felt Kylo Ren’s black gaze on her as the stormtrooper stirred. He had risen woodenly from the floor, snapping straight up on his rear to face the wall of his cell.

                _Something’s wrong._

                The stormtrooper reached out toward his left arm, taking hold of the white armor that padded his forearm. With a fierce yank, he ripped the pale armor off cleanly, leaving his forearm clothed in solid black material, and he tossed the piece aside idly.

                _Something’s wrong._

                He reached to the armor padding his bicep and did the same, snapping it off cleanly and pitching it aside. And as Kylo Ren gauged her expression from his cell, she watched the stormtrooper take his attire apart methodically, stripping the pieces of armor from his body until he was left clothed only in a sleek black uniform and a white helmet in the flashing red lights of the sirens.

                He raised his hands to the helmet and lifted it off his head. His black garb stretched to clothe his neck and then his face as his head was exposed. His identity was still hidden to her, a mystery as the shielded face turned in her direction slowly.

                Rey recoiled, her lips parting, her body going cold.

                _I knew it._ _This is a trap._

                With the shift backward and away, she now had a view into part of the cells down the line past the first two and she stared as all of the stormtroopers appeared at their force field walls, as they turned equally clothed black faces to her. They were all of different stature and bulk but she suddenly felt a realization overcome her, found herself heaving in heart-pounding fear for they were all dressed the same, had all stripped themselves of their armor at the same time to stand at the edge of their cells in unison.

                She snapped her head to look toward Kylo Ren in his prison.

                He had not moved from his position against the wall on the metal bench. But as she met his black gaze, she found herself stricken, gauging his expression closely.

                And her blood froze in her veins as he slowly bent his head at her and allowed a dark smile to curl his full lips.

                _We’re trapped,_ she whispered again deep inside, her own head falling back futilely as she understood at last.

                Kylo Ren raised his jaw a moment later, his dark eyes leaving hers to peer up at the surveillance orb at the corner of his cell. He met the eye of the camera and then stared purposefully, his parted lips meeting into a firm line, his head bowing once more.

                The force field on all of the cells blinked before evaporating.

                Rey was sure in that moment that she was about to empty the contents of her stomach all over the floor as it flipped on her. She spun to face the far wall, the console beside the door that controlled the lighting and the cell shields in this section. The console was dark except for a soft green light that alerted her to the fact that the cell fields had been disabled.

                The former stormtroopers came from their cells, shifting fluidly into the corridor lining the chambers.

                Moving reflexively, even as she turned her eyes toward the Knight in his own unsecured cell, Rey took hold of the hilt at her hip and brandished it, immediately powering it before turning her attention back to the group of black shadows.

                In that moment, she realized what she had missed before as she watched them fall into a formation, as they began to converge on her. She knew deep inside then, _somehow_ , as if she had recognized the group, as if she had trained them and fought beside them herself. Her head turned toward Kylo Ren in anger, feeling him in her head then as she had all those nights she had dreamed of him; just as sudden and just as intrusive but still somehow welcome in the moment for his presence had explained things to her that she should have seen coming from miles away.

                These individuals were the Knights of Ren.

                Kylo Ren rose from the bench in one smooth gesture, standing tall, a deep black shadow in the flashing red light as he clenched his hands into fists.

                Even as she stared at him, the figure closest to her was moving, striking out from the group and directly confronting her. She dragged her eyes from their Master to follow his movements and even as she withdrew, dodging his strike, she felt her senses expand somehow, become wider, become more.

                In his cell, Kylo Ren tilted his head and came forth, hesitating at the edge of his cell to watch her in interest.

                Rey backed away, her blade tight in her palms and she stumbled back a step as the black form swooped in with a raised fist. She felt the air of the attack as it missed her face, slid back another step as a second fist followed the first. As the shadow retreated to compose himself, Rey swung her saber up in a blur of blue light. The blade sliced across the creature’s shoulder as he flinched sideways and Rey spun immediately, her blade arcing in a full circle of light as she brought it up again. She caught the same attacker once more, this time along his jaw and face, and the shadow fell away into his group as they swarmed around him and moved toward her.

                She felt Kylo Ren’s anger even from where she stood. She flicked a quick glance at him, her head snapping in his direction.

                He stood at the edge of his cell still, a hand raised to lean his body on the wall. He met her eyes without expression though his anger poured out of him like water through the weaknesses in a dam.

                The force fields suddenly came back on.

                Ren staggered backward at finding himself trapped once more and he turned his head toward the field before looking to the surveillance camera again.

                Rey whirled in time to dodge another attack from a second knight and as she moved, the knight’s continued momentum sent him into the field surrounding Kylo Ren’s cell. He collided, electricity sparking and taking hold of his form roughly, freezing him in place. Pale blue light streaked across his entire body for a moment before releasing him.

                He fell away, slipping to the floor silently.

                Rey spun back around, already slicing blindly as she saw another figure move out of the corner of her eye. He recoiled, barely missing a strike to the face. She pulled back and then collected herself, gauging the group as they advanced, the original attacker now following in the rear. His black uniform had been carved open with her lightsaber along with the skin beneath, and he bled a deep dark fluid that was unlike the blood she was used to seeing from wounds.

                The sensation from earlier was gone, she realized an instant later as the world came back into focus. For a moment, something had taken over, had centered her. She had been able to move fluidly, had felt such a connection with her own body, had been aware of every movement and everything around herself that it had almost been painful. But it was gone now and she found herself suddenly feeling hesitant as the group moved to swarm her.

                Something brushed her hand.

                Looking down in distraction, she saw only the skin of her palm, the lightsaber held tightly in her grip. Then came the sensation again, of fingers sliding across her wrist before something suddenly struck the edge of her hand violently. Her fingers reflexively tightened but then her body was yanked by the wrist and she was forced to release the hilt of the blade with her other hand as well.

                Luke’s lightsaber flew across the room and stabbed deep into the console, catching for a moment before the blade extinguished. Light sparked from the console, electricity in the air, and the hilt fell to the floor, rolling, as Rey was left staring in confusion.

                The force field walls came down again.

                Rey turned back to the advancing group just in time to catch a backhanded blow across the face. She was tossed sideways into Kylo Ren’s cell, colliding with his hard form where he stood. He caught her against his chest, his arms immediately taking hold of her and dragging her up as her legs threatened to give out.

                Her world was spinning. Her cheek burned as if it was on fire and she felt dizziness begin to rise. For the smallest moment she was grateful that the Knight was holding her for her limbs weren’t responding properly. Blinking to correct her vision, she raised her head.

                The Knight was looking over her head, back toward his knights. There was the shadow of anger on his face and he seemed to glare at one but then he looked down at her.

                Her legs found strength and she moved to straighten, to push him away, but he held on, his arms tightening.

                “I need you to come with me now,” he said to her softly, his voice deep.

                She recognized that voice, she realized almost painfully. Those few times he had spoken in her dreams, his voice had begun to somehow comfort her and now it made her feel things that she didn’t want to feel in that moment.

                “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she hissed at him. Her arms thrashed as she fought the feelings that had suddenly risen, the urges that made her want to do exactly what he had asked of her, that made her want to turn to him even in anger.

                He merely tightened his mouth into a line at her assault, that same anger now clouding his face. Then, releasing her with one hand, he lifted it to her forehead and pulsed his palm.

                Her vision faded away and she melted into him, swallowed up by blackness.

 

** Next Chapter – Book Two: The Dark: Chapter Thirteen: **

“We meet again,” came the low, heavily-masked voice of the Master of the Knights of Ren. Then he was pulling out of the shadows at the corner of her eyes and floating around her shoulder, coming to stand before her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of Book I.


	14. Chapter Thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving!!

**Book Two – The Dark**

 

Chapter Thirteen:

 

                Rey jolted awake, fully, suddenly. Sterile metal walls met her stare as she blinked, as she grimaced slightly at the unfamiliar room.

                Then she felt the cold clamps on her wrists and immediately remembered what had happened.

                “No,” she whispered, anger rising inside of her so completely that she was half surprised she didn’t somehow combust. _“No!”_

                Her shout rang out in the metal room, echoing, as she yanked at her trapped arms, at the hard surface under her that held her imprisoned at an angle, her ankles cuffed as well.

                This was not going to happen again. She had been here once before, in an interrogation chair in another room on another base, but this was the same thing and she had beaten it once.

                She would do it again, by the Force.

                Something moved to her right, just behind her trapped form, bringing her to stiffen.

                “We meet again,” came the low, heavily-masked voice of the Master of the Knights of Ren. Then he was pulling out of the shadows at the corner of her eyes and floating around her shoulder, coming to stand before her. The mask he wore was pristine, new, all black metal and chrome lines. He must have lost the one he had been captured with.

                And a sinking feeling coupled with sudden realization settled over her, as she understood then just as she had understood before.

                He had never been captured. He had willingly made himself their captive, their prisoner, himself and his knights. It had been a strategy, not a blessing, and the thought angered her yet again. She eyed him, loathing him, his very presence.

                The shadow of his thoughts.

                That scattered her for a moment, her eyes flickering as words echoed in her head, familiar but foreign as well. How perfectly she had dreamed him, she realized then almost achingly. How flawlessly she had recreated him that even the actual person could somehow make her feel something.

                His heavily-robed form stood silent as a wraith before her for a long moment, the hood raised over the helmet, blackness upon more blackness. Then he took a step toward her, barely producing a sound, and his voice came again.

                “Scavenger.”

                Rey’s eyes narrowed as she regrouped, as she focused on him, as she fought to tamp down the chill that threatened to become full-blown fear. If she needed to feel anything she was going to stick with anger; it was comforting, it was familiar. It was warm and inviting. So long as he kept the helmet on, she would not have to hear his actual voice; remember it murmuring in her ear, whispering delicately along her neck and skin, groaning as his body became rigid on top of hers just as he came within her.

                The anger that swelled within was a benediction, washing everything else away in beautiful, pristine coolness. “Ben,” she returned dispassionately.

                For a moment there was nothing, no reaction, no words.

                And then she _felt_ him recoil inwardly, felt his entire being stiffen up so tightly it almost stifled the air in her own body. The silence in the chamber was suddenly palpable, heavy. Thick. She could sink into that silence, could succumb to its weight and drown beneath it.

               Then she felt the tidal wave of fury rise, unchecked. It swarmed in her head, startling her with its force and immensity, and it filled the room, coming off the creature garbed in darkness like a tempest. One moment he was just a large and quite intimidating man. 

                The next, he was moving, his entire body a blur of shadow, a monster come to life.

                The savage lightsaber appeared in his hand, shooting to life with a heavy thrum and throwing its glow across the room in patches and ribbons.

                Rey’s eyes dropped to it as he suddenly wielded it, as his anger roared out of him in a rage.

                _I destroyed that on StarKiller. I **destroyed** that-_

                The words screamed in her head, her very voice resounding deep within, a banshee in the night, as he swung that wild blade directly at her head. The terror ratcheted up inside of her like a wave in a tsunami, streaking through her body, freezing her even as she instinctively closed her eyes and waited for the end.

                The lightsaber swung up beside her head, so close that she felt the air as it passed, was almost deafened by the low hum of its blade. Something jolted the tilted surface she stood secured to and then a hard crash sounded on the floor to her right, metal on more metal.

                The lightsaber arced down fluidly to rest at Kylo Ren’s heaving side, his entire form electrified with rage.

                Well, that was an obvious weakness of his, she reflected dimly after realizing she was still alive. She peeked an eye open, still caught in mid-flinch and then lifted her head as he merely breathed loudly, furiously. Swallowing faintly, she turned her head and caught a glimpse of the side of the interrogation chair trapping her flat, now cleanly sliced through and missing one of the clawed pieces meant to secure her head. Her head whipped around a second later in disbelief, her jaw dropping open.

                “You could’ve killed me!” she burst out incredulously.

                It took him a second to reply as if he couldn’t believe the gall. “Yes,” he retorted simply and he swung away from her a moment later, his shoulders rigid under his tattered hood. The fiery lightsaber thrummed at his side as he stormed away a few steps and faced the opposite wall.

                _Breathe. Breathe_ , Rey whispered deep within as she waited, yanking at her wrists in small movements, testing the restraints. She spoke it to herself but she realized dimly that it was almost as if he could hear her as well, as if he could channel her into himself. As he stared at the wall, he seemed to become still and Rey grimaced, casting a quick look down at her restraints, her own calm draining away as she found that she couldn’t find a way to release her wrists. She’d had this issue the first time she had been captured but there had been a stormtrooper standing as guard then. Now there was no one except this dark knight and he seemed to want nothing more than to break her.

                With a deep breath that seemed to rattle, Kylo Ren lifted his head, his shoulders calming. “You’ve been speaking with the General, I see,” he murmured in a robotic tone, once more in control and emotionless.

                Rey’s glare withered, her own calm somehow splintering as hard as she tried to hold it together. “That General is your mother,” she stated wryly as she stared at his broad back.   But as she looked at him carefully, she understood then what she had seen in his silhouette in her dreams as her eyes ran across the width of his shoulders, the hard curve of his arms at his sides, and the thought rankled even then. “But no,” she continued a moment later blithely. “I didn’t need to speak to her to know your true name.” And as she pushed away the fleeting images of his shadow in her room, of the soft caress of his mouth along her skin, she felt anger harden her tone.

                Betrayal.

                It tightened her form, caused a swirl of heat and fire deep within the pit of her stomach. “I only had to be there when you killed your father,” she spat viciously.

                Her words seemed to echo into the ensuing silence between them, falling upon him and latching on with clawed talons.

                She felt the spike of aggression deep inside more than outwardly physically. He lowered his hooded head the tiniest inch but it was the flames in her head, the violence in his thoughts, that disturbed her.

                The sudden memory of Han shouting his name across that long and lonely bridge, his call echoing into stillness and then a sound that resembled the hum of a lightsaber.

                The vision came to her unbidden and not from her point of view, she realized a moment later in surprise.

                Kylo Ren merely continued to face the wall, his head bowed, his fist loosening and then tightening again on his wild weapon.

                That would be a dead end with him, she understood. He had somehow steeled himself against her after he had taken half of the interrogation chair off with her still strapped into the blasted device. Instead, she turned her eyes away for a moment, flying around the room to search it out for weaknesses, for a chance to escape. The silence was almost unbearable though and within a few breaths she found nothing she could work with in the room. Turning her head back to him, she merely watched him critically.

                He remained silent, his shoulders rising and falling with his breaths.

                “Did you hurt them?” she asked then, her hands clenching into fists under the restraints. She had been taken but she had no clue what had happened to the Resistance when she had been stolen away. Now that she was bringing herself to think of them, she found all of her worries returning. Had they abandoned the base in time? Had Kylo Ren and his Knights of Ren dismantled and destroyed the entire base?

                Was his mother still alive? Were Poe and Finn?

                When he didn’t respond, she threw the question at him again, straining against the restraints. “Did you _hurt_ them?”

                He seemed to fiddle with the lightsaber a bit more, swinging it slightly, his hand tightening around the crossguard hilt. “Yes.”

                Rey’s body weakened momentarily, her jaw falling open. “What?” she asked almost inaudibly.

                He still did not turn to face her. “Yes,” he repeated dully.

                Her breathing beginning to quicken, Rey could only stare at his back, watch as he moved around easily and not in the least disturbed by his own response.

                It was her fault. Somehow, it was all her fault. How had this all happened? He would have walked into the command center of the base and ripped right through them upon overpowering her in the cells and even the General would’ve hesitated in that one moment to fight back because he was her son.

                The very same fears she had told Luke about had come to pass.

                _I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t ready. And look what happened. Everything I feared, it all happened._

                Kylo Ren lifted his head and merely stared at the wall, his shoulders rising and falling with easy breaths, his grip loosening on his weapon as he seemed to wait.

                Rey frowned through a haze then, watching him, gauging his movements and his body. No. He was lying. He was _lying_ to her. “You’re lying,” she whispered to his back, recoiling against the chair.

                He tilted his head down to look at the weapon in his hand, black hood shimmering in the light, cocking his head as if to listen.

                He wouldn’t have been this calm if he had indeed gone into that base and taken it apart. She had seen the sudden suffering on his face after immediately killing his father and sending him tumbling into the reactor core. The Dark Side had not won that day; far from it. He had been broken and distracted, even more divided on that lonely bridge until Chewbacca had struck him in the side with the bowcaster and yanked him right back to the situation at hand.

                With the General at the Resistance base, with her blood on his hands as well, he would not be this calm. She knew that he and his father had been estranged even from a young age. The rumors floating around the base had told her as much. But his mother…no. He had loved Leia deeply even as he had been pushed aside, as their connection had barely held on over a widening chasm until it had stretched so thin that it was practically invisible.

                No. He would not want these things for his mother. 

                “Why am I here?” she questioned instead, staring at his back, wishing to burn holes into his spine and shoulders. She may not get a response as to the wellbeing of the Resistance base and its members, but she wasn’t about to let him off easily yet. “We have the map now but it won’t help you anymore. Master Luke is no longer on Ahch-To. He has fled, I don’t know where.”

                And while she lied through omission, she did have truth on her side. Luke Skywalker had indeed left Ahch-To to places unbeknownst to anyone, most especially Rey. She was sure the General knew where her brother currently hid himself but Leia was stronger with her control of the Force than Rey felt she was. Obviously, Luke agreed for he disappeared for long periods before returning to the Resistance base, always quietly and with no notice to anyone. Half the time she only knew he’d returned for the atmosphere on the base was festive, hopeful, those emotions carrying so buoyantly throughout the base that she couldn’t help but latch onto them.

                But it wasn’t that detail that had seemingly angered the Master of the Knights of Ren as he turned slowly to look at her over his shoulder.

                “Master Luke?” he asked slowly, almost tentatively, his deep tone sliding from that black helmet and raised hood. And then, beginning to breathe heavily again, “ _Master_ _Luke_?”

                A tremor ran through Rey at his growl though she kept her mouth shut at his rhetorical question.

                “He is no master,” Kylo Ren uttered, his voice so low it thrummed at the same level as that of his wild lightsaber. “He has never-“

                He broke off, his head shifting sharply away from her, his shoulders rising and falling with each hard breath. Then he whirled around, a flurry of blackness and frayed tatters, returning to her.

                Rey pressed her stiff body hard against the surface at her back, flinching as she waited for him to strike her.

                “I offered to _teach_ you, to show you the ways of the Force!” he shouted at her, his growl deep and far more ferocious under the mask. “Luke knows _nothing_! He is a feeble man, withdrawn and alone! He follows a code long dead!”

                Rey opened her eyes under her grimace, blinking rapidly when she realized that it was not his intention to hurt her, not quite yet.

                “And you would follow _his_ path? The path of the _Jedi_?” Kylo Ren spat at her, his voice almost hypnotic as he snarled under that helmet.

                She wanted to rip that mask from his face, to take him head on, to stop seeing him as a monster even though she knew deep down that that was all he was. A miserable, vengeful creature. One that had shown different sides of himself to her in her dreams, that had been equal parts hard and soft, rough and gentle.

                How had she ever dreamed of him in that way?

                He spoke still, almost barking in rage. “The Jedi are dead and gone! He is the last of a dying breed!” And then he drew close, a sudden movement that caused her to flinch again as he encroached on her, as he breathed mechanically into her very space. “But you… You and I-”

                Rey turned her head to stare at him, a frown pulling her brow low, her heart beating in the silence left behind as he broke off.

                “You and I…” he whispered, his words almost lost in the room, under the black metal. “You and I can create something…”

                Rey bowed her head at his words as she watched him, wishing to yank them from his mouth, from beneath that hideous mask.

                “Something more,” he uttered, his own head bowing low to his chest.

                Silence fell, his hard body still rigid, the lightsaber flaring at his side brilliantly.

                “Something more?” Rey questioned him, echoing his words faintly. She shook her head slightly, her eyes falling away for a moment. “Why would I want to create something more…with you?” she asked and with her words, she tilted her head back, her indifference burning through her and coming out in her question.

                He knew she hated him, knew that she loathed him for everything he had put her through, everything he had done to Finn and Poe, everything he had inflicted on his own father and mother. But in that moment, she wanted him to feel the depths of the pain, the heights of her anger, that he would hurt the very people she had come to care for even if they were his own family. That he would trick her and play with her, body and soul, and then come to her as if she would ever do anything that he asked, as if he had never hurt her. As if he had never broken her even if he had only done it in her dreams.

                Not something she could blame him for but the list of sins was long and she was only getting started.

                He had become rigid at her question and perhaps he felt the rage in her thoughts through the web that tied them together in the Force. She hoped he did. She hoped he felt her everlasting wrath and animosity, her hatred of him and his ideals, his very person.

                “They’ll come for me,” she said to him flatly, somehow managing to quell his rising animosity in the moment. “You may have won that last battle but the General will come for me.” And she glared at him, her hands tightening into fists at her side, trapped as they were. “You can’t hold me forever.”

                He stood in silence for a long pause, breathing casually, the lightsaber humming in his grip. But then he merely nodded once and moved to holster the weapon, the red beam vanishing in a stunted breath. The metal hilt disappeared under the ragged edges of his hood, a sleight of hand, vanishing from view only for his hands to return empty and immediately curl into fists.

                “Perhaps not,” he murmured with another definitive nod of his hooded head, already bent. “But I will be your teacher. I will show you your true potential. And I have already seen into your mind. You will bow to me, of that I have no doubt.”

                She felt her frown smooth into blankness, felt her body become still. “Good luck,” she tossed out and straightened with her words, becoming fluid along the stiff surface at her back, shutting down.

                He would not best her and he would not break her. The Resistance would come for her, she was certain of it. Even if they didn’t know how to find her, didn’t know where the First Order hid, she had faith.

                They would come for her. She just had to resist until then.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Fourteen: **

And as she crumpled to the floor in misery, she realized that this could very well be Day One of…who knew how many scratches in the wall of the hull. She pressed her head to the cool surface and fought the tears that threatened to rise, the powerlessness that began to surge within. This could be Jakku all over again only worse; a constant imprisonment, a relentless humiliation.

And she wasn’t sure she could do it anymore.

 

 


	15. Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen:

 

                She hadn’t had a chance to try out her mind trick again when a pair of stormtroopers had released her from the interrogation chair and escorted her out of the room. Kylo Ren had followed, silent as a ghost, as she had been moved throughout this new base.

                It had several levels, she noted silently as they walked, as the guard trailed her into an elevator, as the monster in black entered last and loomed over her. She merely stared back at him, aware of his eyes on her from beneath the mask, hoping he felt the heat of her glare and the depth of her hatred in her gaze.

                The elevator moved silently, with barely any motion that she didn’t even know if they had traveled up or down. And he had distracted her from even seeing where they were, how long the ride had taken. The doors had slid open behind Kylo Ren’s wide frame and he had stepped backward out of the elevator into a dark and silent hallway, an antiseptic odor hanging around them. One of the stormtroopers nudged her and she tossed him a look before also stepping out and scanning the hallway around her.

                Surveillance cameras in all corners of this compound. Air vents. No stormtroopers on guard or doing their rounds?

                “Where are you taking me?” she demanded of the wraith clothed in blackness as she finished her assessment of the floor.

                He merely tilted his head. “To your new home,” he replied monotonously and he motioned down the hallway toward her left as if it had been an invitation.

                Rey followed the gesture, the beginning pricks of tension rising. “What do you mean-“

                The other stormtrooper pushed her. “Move.”

                Stumbling slightly, Rey stared down the dimly lit metal corridor seeing nothing but closed doors on either side. She frowned, confused. “Move where? There’s nothing here-“

                Taking hold of her arm in a tight grip, Kylo Ren turned to the guards. “Report to your Captain. The prisoner is not to have a guard at her door. The Captain will not have anyone placed in the cells around her, on this floor. No one is to go near her cell at all. Only droids will be allowed anywhere near her to bring her meals and I will reprogram these security consoles with my signature alone. She is to have no visitors of any kind.”

                Rey blinked at him over her shoulder, her skin tanned in his black-gloved grip. “Visitors,” she snapped. “I am here against my will. Who would even visit me-“

                “Go, now. Deliver my instructions to your Captain,” he cut her off as he dismissed the guards.

                And as the stormtroopers returned to the elevator, Kylo Ren began to move, dragging her struggling form along.

                “Where are you taking me?” she demanded, trying to yank her arm from his tight grip. “Where am I?”

                “You are in the cell levels,” he replied in that deep, expressionless tone of his as he led her down the hallway. “You will have an entire floor to yourself.”

                She wanted to let out a snide remark at that but they had stopped before a door, the knight leaning close to the console. As she watched, he lifted a hand and waved it over the pad.

                The door slid open with a soft swish and she faced a small metallic room. A hard silver slab lay horizontally atop metal legs against the right side of the chamber and there was a large sheet of even more metal enclosing a small quadrant of the room on the left-hand side toward the rear.

                “Welcome home,” Kylo Ren said to her quietly. And as she opened her mouth to question him, he released her arm and shoved her into the room roughly.

                Rey stumbled in, momentarily thrown. But as she recovered she spun back around and launched herself at the door, her fists lifting to attack him.

                The door slid shut in her face, the knight disappearing behind it, her body crashing against it painfully in her anger. Colliding, she pushed her arms and head into the door for a long moment, feeling panic rise within. Then, slipping down along its surface slightly, she slammed the side of her fist on the metallic door, the resounding echo of the strike fueling her anger as she realized he had locked her in. “You can’t keep me here!” she shouted furiously, bringing her fist down on the door again. “I will not be your prisoner!”

                But no response was returned to her and as she settled into silence she realized that she heard nothing from his side either. She pressed her ear to the cold door, straining to hear something, anything. There was nothing, and she realized a moment later that she didn’t even know if he was still out there, if he had left the second he had tossed her into the cell. She grimaced, her hand unclenching, and she slapped her open palm to the door instead as a last resort, a sound to quell her despair.

                She stood pressed to the cold door for a long while, her breathing slowing back to its normal pace. What was the point, she wondered. What was the point bringing her here, imprisoning her, when there was nothing she could tell them? It was obvious he had brought her here the way he had before; the First Order had taken her and let BB-8 go with the belief that their knight would be able to take the map directly from her head. But as she had told him before, she didn’t know where Luke Skywalker resided now, where he could be found. His visits to the Resistance base were sporadic, few and far in between. She was of no use to him, just as BB-8 wouldn’t be. There was nothing he could take from her now, nothing she could give him.

                _“Why am I here?”_ she shrieked hoarsely against the door into what was probably an empty corridor outside, her hopelessness causing her to react. And when no one responded she lowered her head and pressed her forehead to the cold surface wearily, her voice trembling. “Why am I _here_..?”

                As silence met her tired question, she merely slipped down to her knees, her hand sliding down hard metal with a loud squeak.

                She had been haughty with the knight of Ren before when he’d held her in the interrogation chair but now, in the quiet stillness of the cell, she realized that she really didn’t know if the Resistance would come for her, if they even could. If they would ever even be able to find her.

                She could be held with the First Order for weeks, months, even _years_ if he desired it. She would never see another friendly face again and she bumped her forehead against the cold door gently, regretting everything in that moment. She could never return home and no one would ever know what had happened to her.

                And as she crumpled to the floor in misery, she realized that this could very well be Day One of…who knew how many scratches in the wall of the hull. She pressed her head to the cool surface and fought the tears that threatened to rise, the powerlessness that began to surge within. This could be Jakku all over again only worse; a constant imprisonment, a relentless humiliation.

                And she wasn’t sure she could do it anymore.

 

                When he returned for her hours upon hours later, she had curled up on the hard metal slab to the side of the room, having dozed off to the sight of what had been a latrine behind the vertical metal partition blocking away that quadrant from view of the doorway. She didn’t know how long she had slept; her internal clock was off, the world hidden away behind the cold walls of her cell.

                A droid had come by to deposit a meal to her through a small latch in the wall. Well, it was barely a meal, more like rations and a container of water. At least she hadn’t had to scavenge for it, she sighed as she’d sat down to eat. Upon finishing she stretched out again on the metal slab to bide her time.

                She almost seemed to sense him before he appeared at the door. Her eyes slid open, her skin buzzing. She blinked, her lids dropping low as she lowered her eyes to her hand, to the gooseflesh that had broken out across her arm.

                He was returning. He was here.

                The door slid open with a hiss and she immediately lifted her head from her curled arm, her anger instinctively rising deep within.

                He was a shadow in the doorway, mask in place, the hood raised over his head with the frayed ends hanging low behind his broad back.

                In that moment, she hated the very sight of him even as her body yearned for him traitorously.

                “Come with me,” he ordered her monotonously, his impressive form taking up almost the entire stretch of the doorway.

                She swallowed a hard lump down as she sat up, her legs slipping across the metal slab to the floor. “Where are you taking me?” she asked him with more control than she felt inside.

                He didn’t reply, instead taking a step back from the doorway silently.

                Standing carefully, Rey searched the knight of Ren. He wore his usual uniform and his lightsaber was holstered at his hip, hidden in the shadow of his tight arm and clenched fist. She dragged her eyes away from it, trailing them over the cell she was currently housed in. If she could get her hands on his weapon, she could tip the scales between them, could attempt to subdue him and make a run for it. She had escaped in StarKiller Base before; she could do the same here in this strange new place he had trapped her in.

                As she came to the doorway, she raised her eyes to the knight, her fingers curling in slightly. And even as she bunched up to overtake him, she was almost certain she heard him sigh softly beneath the mask.

                A moment later she was darting forward, pushing off her leg and moving for him, intent on getting her hands on his weapon.

                The knight of Ren took another sweeping step back and lifted a hand almost absentmindedly, fingers flicking wide.

                Rey felt as if she had rammed into a wall, her entire body halted in mid-air painfully. With a stunted breath, she found herself hovering, unable to move even the smallest muscle of her form. She inhaled in a panic, her eyes widening as they shifted around her suspended figure, catching on the floor, on the doorway around her frozen frame, on the knight’s extended arm.

                Kylo Ren tilted his head at her slowly, his chest rising and falling wearily. “I assume this was not what you intended,” he mused dryly.

                Rey tried to yank at her arms, attempted to move her legs. “Let…go of me,” she hissed at him furiously, her heart beginning to pound in her ears.

                He hesitated, his head cocking once more to face her head on. “We can do this one of two ways,” he said to her casually, his voice mechanical beneath the mask. “The easy way. Or the hard way. You can accompany me to the refresher or I can _escort_ you to the refresher.”

                She blinked at him. “The refresher?” she questioned him tentatively.

                He didn’t seem to waver. “To bathe.”

                She felt herself recoil as much as she could, paralyzed as she was in his Force grip. She could use a sonic bath. Honestly, she could use _any_ sort of bath. And even though she was trapped in his clutches now, she could find another way to subdue him, another means of escape. She would need to bide her time, measure his movements and assume that she would be able to overcome him.

                She doubted herself even then.

                “It is not my intention to fight with you the entire time I keep you here,” he said to her quietly, his modified voice betraying a hint of emotion.

                She couldn’t trust it, though, not then. She had allowed herself to fall over and over again in her dreams and he had proven to be nothing more than a traitor and a murderer. He had broken her heart almost carelessly with the ease he had used to trap her, to kidnap her.

                And the horrible thing was that she couldn’t even blame him. It was her fault, all of it; she had dreamed of him, had created a vision, a specter of him, that didn’t exist. The man in her dreams with the frightening grip, with the tenderness; this was not him. Not this figure draped in shadows, clothed in black tatters and a chrome face.

                _Is this what I wanted to see of him,_ she asked herself desperately, her fingers straining to clench into fists at her sides. _Is this what I wanted him to be after I almost killed him in the snow?_

                He merely waited for her, his silence hinging on her acquiescence.

                If she said no, if she put up a fight, she didn’t know the next time he would offer her the smallest measure of decency again. And she could use a bath. She had spent hours in the cell, countless hours unconscious as he had transported her between the Resistance base to this First Order compound. And she hadn’t bathed in at least half a day before the abduction. She felt positively grimy and even her clothes could use a launder.

                She fell limply in his Force grip at the thought, as she gave herself another quick pass. “We’ll do it the easy way,” she said to him quietly, her eyes lowering in defeat.

                He held her for a long spell still, her body suspended off the floor. And then he carefully lowered her to the ground, supporting her as she found her feet and then the strength in her legs to stand. As she straightened, he released the rest of her, his clawed fingers loosening, his hand falling to his side carelessly. “Then come with me, scavenger,” he said to her in that strangely metallic voice.

                She merely nodded, coming out of the doorway and waiting on him to direct her. “I will follow you,” she said to him quietly and in the next moment she raised a defiant gaze to him, her anger simmering just below the surface. “But don’t think for one second that I am relinquishing to you,” she growled, her accented tone trembling with barely restrained fury. “You are nothing more than a knight for the First Order and I am your prisoner. There is nothing more and nothing less here.”

                Kylo Ren stood several feet away from her in silence, his helmeted head falling at her words. But then he raised it slightly, nodding only once. “Agreed,” he rasped.  

 

                She had skipped the sonic shower and gone straight for the water shower. It had been purely selfish of her and had also had an underlying ulterior motive; the longer she stayed in that shower, the longer she would spend outside of her cell.

                And so she let the water cascade over her body, warming her cold fingers and allowing it to awaken her somewhat.

                He had brought her to his own quarters to use his refresher and she had hesitated upon first entering ahead of him. The suite was dark with two closed doors in the main room; one immediately to her right that had led to the refresher where she was currently using up all the water aboard this First Order compound, and the other to the far back on the left leading to his bedroom where he had flicked his hand at the door upon leaving her to the refresher. His bedroom had also been dark but she had caught a glimpse of the corner of a cushioned pallet, one far more luxurious than the one she’d had at the Resistance base.

                He had demanded that she leave her clothes in a pile outside of the refresher which had immediately rankled. It had meant disrobing before him, adding insult to injury. Would she have to sacrifice her dignity as well in this prison?

                She had practically felt the eye roll from him. Speaking quietly behind his mask, he had merely repeated his order before turning his back and striding toward his bedroom. A wave of his hand had sent the door swishing closed after he had sent a flippant remark about the additional towels in the refresher.

                She had been left alone in his main quarters. No one to guard her as he had turned his attention to other matters.

                It hadn’t made any kind of difference. She still had no access, no means of escaping her confinement. The consoles would not obey her demands nor were there any other ways to exit these quarters. She’d only had one option and it was one that she had taken to almost happily. Entering the refresher and with the door closing immediately behind, she had surveyed the wash room for any other surveillance devices. Finding none, she had stripped down and bundled her clothes together, yanking a towel off a glass shelf stacked with more towels and several bottles filled with clear and opaque liquids. Wrapping the towel around herself, she had deposited her soiled clothes outside and had quickly scampered back into the refresher, closing the door behind and proceeding to enjoy the best shower of her life.

                He had very few personal items in the refresher itself, she noticed early on. The bare necessities, the entire room tiled in black and chrome, stark and forbidding. But as she washed her hair and her body with the items he did possess, she found herself conflicted. The wash for her hair smelled familiar; of woods and spice. The lather for her body was also recognizable.

                She was halfway through the shower before she remembered where she recognized it from. And upon remembering, she was abruptly assaulted by visions and sensations. As if a dam had broken, she felt everything wash over her, the influx bringing her to a stop under the shower spray, leaving her breathless.

                Flashes of his anger. The darkness when he had come to her in her dreams, how his face had always remained hidden. How she had breathed a stranger to life.

                She gasped at the suddenness, at the shiver that raced down her spine even under the fall of the hot water. Her legs trembled, her body clenching.

                She had dreamed of him, had brought him into being as someone else entirely. And the person she had created had been as dark as the person he had been drawn from, but he had brought things out of her that she couldn’t trust anyone else to know.

                His actual model least of all.

                Now, in the refresher, she closed her eyes, the water sluicing through her hair as she bowed her head and jammed her palms roughly against the wall of the refresher stall, searching for a handhold, for strength.

                His mouth along her skin, his tongue trailing up the line of her neck. His arms as he had wrapped them around her and dragged her tightly to his hard frame. His fingers as he had traced her muscles under her skin, the touch light and fleeting. His hips pressed to hers, pushing into her.

                Her lips parted as she felt the sensations once more, her fingers clawing into the tiles almost helplessly.

                His hands dropping low to her waist and hips, his fingers slipping around to draw lightly across her abdomen before sliding into the dip between her thighs. Finding the spot she hadn’t even known could weaken her in a breath, with a mere touch.

                Even now, her hand left the tiled wall and fell, hovering at her side restlessly, reaching. Wanting.

                His breath along her neck, the flick of his tongue against the shell of her ear. Her sigh and gasp as he had trailed the pads of his fingers over her wetness, as he had lifted his other hand to her breast to cup her and drag her tightly to his taut form at her back.

                Her hand moved, slipping to her belly as she avoided the water that threatened to drown her, that meant to be inhaled as it fell down the curves of her face. Her fingers were tentative as they moved down to her center, as she pushed them between her legs and then between her lips below slowly, achingly.

                And suddenly she was back there, in her dreams, in her bed. With him. Her eyes squeezed shut tightly as she felt his fingers in place of hers, as she remembered how he had flung her leg open even when she had attempted to trap his hand between her thighs, to keep him exactly where she had needed him then. He worked through her now, the memories coming alive, becoming more, as she touched herself, as she inhaled the scent of him through his soap, the lather on her slick skin. A sigh left her lips as she ran her fingers over herself, as she curled them to timidly slip them inside, all the while imagining the caress to be his. His hand was larger, fingers longer. He had reached deeper inside of her while palming her, his other hand clutching her breast with a hard grip and she had surrendered herself entirely to him, to whatever he had wanted to do to her. As she felt her head fall back into the overhead spray, she realized that if he were to join her in the refresher at that moment, if he were to return his fingers to their rightful place, that she would give herself over to him, would allow him do anything he desired. She needed it in that moment. She needed someone to catch her because she was falling and she didn’t know how far she would plummet before she encountered the hard ground.

                Even a monster such as him.

                In the back of her head she felt the smallest ripple, the softest of sighs. The faintest groan of need and weariness.

                She didn’t care. Her fingers rubbing against the most sensitive part of her, she felt herself abandon everything to her own touch, to the vision of his fingers in place of hers. She felt the tremors rising through her, the need beginning to stiffen her hips against her stroke.

                The breath came again, louder, desperate, the ghost of longing in her head; unwilling, but a slave to the desire nonetheless.

                She attempted to push it away but it was suddenly all around, almost omnipresent. Overwhelming. Her mouth fell open, a soft moan leaving her lips as she touched herself, as she began to work herself to release. Her chest rose and fell with each silent breath, her face pinching in a grimace as she reached for climax, as the water fell over her.

                The air seemed to shimmer around her hooded gaze, mass draping over her the way only a warm and heavy body could.

                She was suddenly taken back to the dream she’d had of him when he had come to her room and taken her, when he had run his hands over her back, between her thighs, and dipped low with his fingers before begging entrance of her. He had been heavy when he had encased her, when he had draped himself all over her in the midst of their lovemaking. Her fingers worked faster, her pelvis curling around her hand as she remembered how he had penetrated her slowly then desperately, until he had been seated so deep within her that she hadn’t recognized herself without him. She felt the climax building unbearably, her hand slick between her legs underneath the falling water, another low moan slipping out between her clenched teeth. He had made her his own and had completely possessed her afterward, thrusting into her roughly, yearningly. She would have given her entire world for the pulse of his hips, the clash of their bodies.

                She would’ve given her _soul_.

                She felt a shiver course through her at the thought, felt the caress of breath at her ear, the softest groan. Ghostly fingers with hers, directing her, guiding her to that edge that had seemed so far away only moments ago. Those fingers knew her better than she knew herself, she realized dimly as they rubbed against her center, as she trailed her fingers deep between her lips below and traced circles. Words built up in her throat, in her mouth, as the fingers moved faster, applied pressure, just before her world turned white behind her closed eyes.

                Her climax washed over her finally, streaking through her and paralyzing her, drawing a loud, distressed cry from her lips that echoed throughout the room.

                His stunted breath at her back. His mouth trailing over her shoulder, teeth nipping. His body enveloping her in warmth, in hunger. His hardness deep inside of her, thrusting in and out with every pulse of his hips. How he had emptied himself inside of her when his own orgasm had claimed him and how he had made her his in the shadow of a dream.

                She trembled as the ripples of her climax pounded through her and enslaved her, consumed her. Her body shuddered, convulsing weakly with the tremors as they swept throughout her entire figure in fire and desire.

                She wanted him. Now. She wanted him _now_.

                The air pushed in around her, heavier somehow, falling like warm molasses that meant to suffocate. And then a moment later it was gone, lifting away, becoming mere humidity from the heat of the water, the moisture in the air.

                Her breathing returned to her as her eyelashes fluttered weakly, the shivers fading slowly as her fingers stroked deeply and then gently, carefully. She was so sensitive, her other hand against the tiled wall barely supporting her as her legs shook.

                She didn’t know how long it took her to come back to herself but even when she recovered, she could only look toward the door of the refresher through the steamed transparisteel, unable to move. And she felt in that moment that she was not alone, that she had not been alone through any of what had just transpired.

                That he had been there with her throughout the entire thing.

                But she could only drop her head and breathe tremulously, her chest rising and falling with each diminishing wave until in the end she was left with only one thought, one that perplexed her vaguely.

                How had she dreamed his scent?

 

                He should never have brought her here, he realized painfully.

                His palms were pressed to either side of the refresher door, fingers clawed and attempting to bite through the metal of the walls, to dig talons into the pristine surface.

                There was even the possibility that he could break through the wall with his straining erection alone.

                Why had he brought her here, he questioned wildly. What had he been thinking?

                No, he knew what he had been thinking and what had prompted him to seek her out at last. What had demanded it of him.

                And now, she was separated from him by a metal door that would obey his command if he wanted it to open but he couldn’t do it and the weakness he felt in that moment angered him. He wanted to burst into the room, storm into the refresher stall, grab her and bend her over, push into her and sate himself within her. He needed to find release and he knew he could find it within her tight, wanting body.

                Except that in that moment, she didn’t want him. She didn’t want _him_. She wanted the man that he had become when he had visited her in her dreams. She didn’t even know that man had existed, that he had fled to her unwittingly in the beginning and then in fury, in desperation. In desire. A drug he had become addicted to. He had needed her strength, had needed her to take the pain from him, and when it had all been said and done, he had returned to her because she had become his comfort.

                But she didn’t know any of it. She didn’t even know that she had called to him just now in evoking those dreams again as she had touched herself, that he’d had no choice but to hear her and feel her within the refresher as he stood outside the door, half quaking with desire.

                Dreams were so fleeting and he was a coward.

                Her cry rang out from the refresher, half ache, half release, and he winced, bowing his head so far that it practically rested on the door to the room. Even as he felt her tremble, he shook as well; her from climax, him from the utter strength it took to restrain himself from coming all over the door, all over his uniform.

                A beep came from the door to his quarters, bringing him to stiffen suddenly. Someone come to see him, a visitor.

                No, he thought immediately after. He didn’t entertain visitors. It was the droid that had taken her clothes to be laundered. He looked over his shoulder toward the door and waved a hand quickly, a sharp gesture.

                It was indeed the droid and the small creature rolled in as the doors slid open to permit it, a set of freshly cleaned and pressed clothes in its metallic claws.

                “Leave it here,” he ordered raggedly, his voice raspy.

                As the droid slid to his side he straightened carefully and drew back from the refresher door, his hands falling to clench into fists at his sides. He watched blindly as the droid lowered the clothes to the floor of his suite beside the refresher. Then it turned to him, beeped as if to announce its job completed, and rolled back out through the open doorway and down the corridor, the doors swishing closed to hide it away.

                With a furious growl, he stormed from the doorway of the refresher and stomped to a side table, taking up the black and silver helmet that awaited him. Simmering with barely contained rage, he jammed it down over his head, grimacing slightly when he caught an ear at an angle, and he heaved as the helmet mechanism shifted and slid into place around his jaw. As the helmet encased his head and hid his face away, he found that he could finally breathe only then, taking in a deep gulp of air in an attempt to settle himself.

                But he couldn’t. He felt her, his skin prickling as hers did, shivers running through him, the vestiges of her climax. He grimaced, wishing to shut away the sensations, her heavy whispers, the trembling in her legs and hips. He needed to contain himself but he couldn’t when she was so close and so fragile.

                With a raging growl, he tossed his hand in the air and swiped it.

                The doors to his quarters opened once more and he burst out of them, almost running. He would leave her in his quarters for now; she had no access, no way to operate the doors. And with no visitors to come calling, no troopers making their rounds who had access codes to his quarters for her to turn, she would be alone, stuck behind walls and doors that would not obey her.

                It would just be another cell in her prison. Exactly what he needed it to be even if it was his own suite that was to become the prison.

                Just so long as he could get away from her right then.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Fifteen: **

With a hard yell, he drew the lightsaber back, yanking her head backward along her neck painfully. And then he ran her through, the red blade impaling her so deeply that she felt the hard bump of the crossguard where it rammed against her diaphragm.

 


	16. Chapter Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, I posted the links to the playlist for Book II on my profile. It's either a Spotify or 8tracks link you can use, or you can go to the tumblr post just to see the songs listed. Hope you all check it out!

Chapter Fifteen:

 

                Rey had been trapped in Kylo Ren’s rooms for hours when he finally returned.

                The large floor-to-ceiling windows taking up one wall of his bedroom were constructed of some sort of black transparisteel, the likes of which she had never seen before. She had spent several minutes just staring at the surface of it, seeing herself reflected in it. What was on the other side, she wondered, having leaned to squint closely into it.

                His other rooms had given nothing away. Even the console wouldn’t acknowledge her presence. She had been forced to sit on his couch in his main living suite after two hours of fruitless searching, of too much time in which to consider her current predicament. Not that the couch was uncomfortable; she just didn’t trust it nor the two wooden tables sitting so innocently on either side of the couch with their pretty little cozy light fixtures.

                Much too homely and warm for such a beast.

                Her searches had given her nothing to work with. There were numerous latches in the walls of his main room and his bedroom but they wouldn’t come open and she had nothing slender or small enough to jar them open. On top of it, there were numerous air ducts toward the ceiling of his main room, though none in his bedroom. One panel of slats over his couch had afforded her a peek into darkness. She could fit in those ducts if she managed to pull that screen off, she wagered, but it was attached firmly and she had no tools with which to unscrew it from the vents. She made a note in her head as she sat down on his couch. If he would continue to remain courteous with the showers, she would have many more chances at getting into those vents to escape. She just needed to bide her time and work slowly and meticulously.

               Instead, for the last few hours, she had attempted to sleep as his couch was much easier to take than that cold metal slab of a bed in her cell.

                The door slid open, the console beeping, and the sound had dragged her from her light nap, causing her to seize and snap up.

                Entering the room, he seemed to spare her a glance before brushing right by her figure on the couch and heading toward the bedroom.

                Blinking to clear away the vestiges of sleep, Rey dropped her legs to the floor, spinning on her rear to straighten up. “Where did you go?” she called quietly.

                He didn’t reply for a long moment, shifting around in the bedroom, the mechanized hiss of something opening coming from within the room.

                Sighing inwardly, Rey turned her head down as she leaned over her knees and propped her elbows on her thighs. She was even more tired than before her nap and she cursed her body for that, grimacing wearily. How did one come away even more tired from having sleep than from having none?

                Coming from the bedroom, Kylo Ren emerged into the main room of his living quarters, his helmeted head turning down to where she sat on the couch. “Is that where we are now?” he asked her in a deep, low tone. “On such grounds that you feel you can question me?”

                Rey had turned her attention to him as he had entered and at his words she fought the urge to roll her eyes. Instead she turned her head away to face forward once more before dropping it back down. “Fine,” she stated wearily. “Are you returning me to my cell now? Or have you finally decided to kill me? Either way, anything is better than this waiting.”

                Exhaling slightly, the knight also bowed his head, his gesture much slower and deliberate. “Neither. You have-“

                “Were you in that shower with me?” she asked him then, the question coming unbidden and yet somehow spilling from her mouth. Even as it passed through her lips she wanted to recoil, to pull it back into herself in mortification.

                He paused, his entire form stiffening at her inquiry though he did not ask her to repeat it.

                And in that moment she was sure he had been there with her, that he had been in her head and had been with her as she had brought herself to climax under her fingers, thinking of him the entire time.

                But then he responded in a low growl, his voice enhanced by that helmet. “Did you see me in that shower with you?” he returned darkly, emotionlessly.

                As she blinked at his response, he continued on, his tone lifting. “You have been summoned before the Supreme Leader.”

                Rey stared at him, her eyes burning into his helmet. “The Supreme Leader?” she questioned in a hard tone.

                Of course she had heard of him, understood his name only as Snoke, and had been versed on this creature that had stolen Ben Solo away from his parents and family slowly, gradually. Efficiently.

                “Why?” she demanded curtly.

                His head came back up again as if her questions angered him. “I am in no position to question the Supreme Leader and neither are you. You are to accompany me now to see him. On your feet.”

                Frowning in anger, Rey slowly stood, her arms hanging loosely at her side. She recoiled slightly as he came from his room and swept past her, the torn edges of his hood trailing along her bare arm as she shifted to move out of his path.

                “What will he do to me?” she asked and her words hung in the silence of his quarters, causing him to stop abruptly. As she faced his broad back, she turned her head to face it fully, her eyes falling blindly. “Ben? What will he do to me?”

                He whirled on her and she knew he did so in that moment because of the name she had used for him. She sensed the anger in him, the hatred for the name. But as he seemed to face her, to look at her, he didn’t reply for a beat, his breathing falling silent under that metallic helmet. Then, almost reluctantly, he answered, “He will make you see the truth,” and his voice was quiet, resigned.

                And then he was moving once more, not looking to see if she followed. His hand lifted, waving at the console at the doorway and the doors slid open to allow his exit.

                Feeling sudden exhaustion only, Rey sighed wearily and moved to follow, her legs feeling heavy and leaden.

                He led her down several turns in cold black corridors, halting at last before a lift and turning slightly toward her as she slowed to a stop just behind him. As the lift came, he motioned her in and she acquiesced, entering and then turning to monitor his gestures as he followed and motioned to the console inside the elevator. She had no sense of how these systems worked and there was no number to depict which floor had been chosen but she was sure this facility had more than fifty levels. She just couldn’t tell in which direction they moved and how many levels they passed before the lift doors slid open onto another floor.

                Stepping away, Kylo Ren waited outside of the doors for her to come out. Then he turned and led her down more black hallways, shuttered rooms and console patches whirring with activity though she couldn’t see what their purpose was.

                Coming to a stop in the middle of a long dark hallway, the knight paused and turned to face two large metallic doors, his helmeted head lifting as if to admire the reflective surfaces. “Here,” he stated quietly.

                Rey came to a slow stop and also raised her head, her light eyes flying around the tall doors. There was a sudden fear inside of her and she turned to the nearest person, which was him. “Will you be with me in there?” she asked softly and she didn’t understand then why she would ask it of him, why she would need him. But she suddenly knew that she would and the fear was almost overpowering from one moment to the next.

                He turned his head down, metal and chrome, and he said, “I will not.”

                Recoiling at the coldness in his tone, she stared at him for another moment before snapping her head to face the door again. Wordlessly, she began to shake her head slowly, reluctantly. “No. Then no, I don’t…I don’t want to go in there-“

                His hand darted out to take hold of her arm and even as she gasped, he waved a hand at the doors.

                They slid open with a rumble, the whole floor seeming to shake.

                Her lips parting, Rey continued to shake her head, her heart jumping into her throat. “No. I…no-“

                As the doors opened fully, Kylo Ren dragged her with him into the cold cavernous room that awaited her. She slid behind him, stumbling even as she raised her eyes to take in the entire room. It felt almost like a temple, quiet with the weight of ghosts and darkness, of something mystical, of something more than she understood. She was yanked down the long lonely corridor leading to a large pedestal in the center of the room, a dim light overhead shining eerily onto that lonely platform.

                Walking the long path, Kylo Ren reached the end before her and then pulled her forth with an uncanny strength, shoving her ahead.

                She staggered and quickly righted herself, whirling to face him in anger. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “Why am I here?”

                Wordlessly, the knight lifted his masked face.

                And she felt it then. Something was coming. There was the sudden hum of something, the buzz of what could have been magic. Blinking blindly at the knight as he now seemed oblivious to her, she slowly turned back to face the empty pedestal, her skin breaking into gooseflesh.

                There was a shimmer in the air then, appearing almost lightly, beautifully. A hologram, she realized as soft rays slipped down from above to wash over the pedestal.

                And then something was appearing there and she drew away reflexively, a hand lifting before her as if to ward off an attack.

                A large, hunched figure began to appear on the pedestal, seated in an oversized throne.

                Rey blinked and then stared, her jaw falling open. The knight shifted behind her but she could barely focus on him, could barely understand the hunched and wizened creature in the holographic throne that had suddenly appeared before her.

                The humanoid form sat seated for a long silent moment. And then, as if finally seeing her, he leaned forward slowly.

                Rey drew a step back as she stared up at his form, as he drew so far forth that he seemed a giant intent on wiping her off the base with his foot.

                The doors slid open at the back of the room and she whirled in sudden panic; just in time to see Kylo Ren walking through the open doors, tossing a glance over his shoulder from under his helmet before vanishing behind the closing doors at his back.

                “No-“

                The word came from her lips softly even though her entire heart was behind it, her breath flying free with it. Feeling the panic begin to overwhelm, she moved to follow after him even though he was gone, her legs carrying her back the way she had come.

                “Girl.”

                Rey slid to a stop, her eyes fixed blindly on the closed doors, recognizing her escape but no longer able to follow through. He was gone and he had left her in this room alone for that creature on the throne to have his way with her.

                _How could you do this to me-_

                “Girl,” came the voice again, loud even as a hiss, the growl venomous in the vast room.

                Heaving in dread, Rey stared at the closed door for one last moment before finally turning back around to face the thing on the throne.

               Even as a hologram, his skin was gray and drawn, disfigured, a healed tear along a cheek. He was bald and emaciated, a tall and slender form. Weak, she thought foolishly in that moment.

                “The girl that Kylo Ren has spoken of,” the creature on the throne rasped, long clawed fingers unrolling along the stone holographic armrests, unwinding and curling like talons as he spoke. “The girl that has my most valuable knight distracted.”

                She cursed in her head dimly, her eyes widening as she stared at the hologram.

                “What is your name, girl?” he asked in a hollow growl, leaning forward slightly as if to get a better look at her.

                _No. No. Don’t give him your name-_

                She flinched as his question came again, louder this time and with anger now in the hiss. “ _What is your name?_ ”

                Her eyes squeezing shut tightly, she shook her head curtly, wincing. “No,” she made out in a whisper, her face distorted in the grimace. “No. I’m not telling you my name.”

                And when he didn’t reply to that, she carefully peeked an eye open.

                The creature on the throne had settled back on his throne, straightening rigidly, his fingers wrapping around the edges of the stone rests again. “Very well,” he said slowly, softly. “I will have your name before we are done today. And you will wish that you had given me the information freely.”

                Swallowing around the lump in her throat, Rey composed herself slightly, her brow drawing low. “I am not afraid of you,” she said softly, her voice carrying in the cavernous room, her heart seeming to echo loudly throughout its vastness. “You do not control me-“

                And as the words left her lips, she suddenly felt the strange presence in her head. It felt cool and then cold, as if she had rapidly consumed one of those icy sweets that Finn had taken a liking to when he had begun to recover and hadn’t been able to fully process whole foods yet. She grimaced slightly and then winced outright as she felt the coldness sweep through her head, prickling and then stinging at her temples. Lifting a hand to her head, she hunched over, her jaw falling open in a soundless cry.

                “I can do more than control you,” the creature on the pedestal said leisurely, almost alluringly. “I can make you _see_.”

                A moment later, her eyes came open widely and even as she took in the smooth floor underfoot, she saw something else in her mind, in the darkness that resided within.

                Blood. She saw blood.

                Flinching, she shut her eyes once more and staggered sideways, her fingers digging into her scalp as she pressed her palm to her temple, as she tried to slow the coldness that was spreading throughout her head and her body.

                Blood. She suddenly had it on her hands, staining her palms in streaks, running down the edges in rivulets. With a hard gasp she dragged it away from her head and began to wipe at it, somehow wiping it even more along her hands, soiling her palms, managing to get it in between her fingers. Heaving in shock and then fear, she lifted her head and the cavernous room with its miserable hologram was gone. She was standing on wet terrain with rain falling heavily all around in the night, lightning flashing in the distance to illuminate the never-ending black landscape.

                _Where am I-_

                Looking down, she saw the rain mix with the blood in her stained palms, saw it trail in a steady stream until it had been almost cleaned but it was still there and it still ran, dripping to the ground-

                Looking down, she saw the body at her feet and she immediately scrambled backward, slipping and sliding across wet soil.

                He was here.

                Even as she meant to bend to the corpse before her, to check the wellbeing of the person, she heard the hum and hiss of his feral lightsaber and she was not surprised when she felt comfort more than fear at hearing its thrum. Lifting her head, she looked for him and he was before her, standing in the rain over the body between them.

                “What did you do?” she asked him in a whisper even as her words didn’t carry under the heavy rain and the thunder crashing in the distance. “Ben, what did you-“

                But then he lifted his weapon and she threw her hand up in terror at realizing that he was aiming for her. Hiding her face behind her arm to shield herself, she turned her head away.

                The lightsaber thrummed once more, the blade splitting the rain and she felt strange; a sudden pain in her arm and then nothing.

                Wincing, she waited for a long moment still covering herself with her arm. When no one and nothing moved in the downpour, she gingerly turned her head back slowly, lifting her eyes.

                And staring as she saw the cauterized stump before her eyes. Breathing shallowly, her mind not grasping what she looked at, she blinked in wide-eyed confusion before lowering her stare to the wet ground before her.

                Her hand and wrist rested in the moonlit soil, fingers curled in.

                A shriek broke from her a moment later, lost in the thunder in the night and somehow resounding around her as if she stood in a hall. Screaming again, she felt her strength leave her legs and she toppled to her knees, dimly drawing her wounded arm into her chest, terror spilling from her in heavy gasps and tears.

                Standing over her, Kylo Ren’s hand tightened on his weapon, the crossguard flaming wildly. And then he lifted it once more slowly, drawing the blade overheard.

                “What is your name, girl?” he asked her, hovering above her as the lightning streaked again, as the chrome of his helmet became the only visible part of him under his ragged hood.

                She couldn’t answer even if she had wanted to, her voice stolen as she stared at her severed hand. Blood didn’t even run from her arm; the lightsaber had seared her flesh and burned it to a stump. There was no pain there, only the ghostly strange feeling of a scar, of something that was no longer there.

                He lowered his weapon, the lightsaber falling away as he took hold of her by the hair at the nape of her neck, as he tangled his fingers in it and then yanked her forward on her knees. _“What is your name?”_ he demanded, his voice streaking out from under the mask, growling.

                Weeping, she could only shake her head at him, her hand pressing her wounded arm to her chest. The rain ran into her eyes as she was twisted up to face his helmet, as she saw someone that she should never have trusted.

                _“Please…”_

                With a hard yell, he drew the lightsaber back, yanking her head backward along her neck painfully. And then he ran her through, the red blade impaling her so deeply that she felt the hard bump of the crossguard where it rammed against her diaphragm.

                Her breath was taken from her, stripped as easily as if she had been submerged under water; just as suddenly and just as brusquely. For a long moment she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t focus on anything. She could only see the black hooded figure above her, his hand holding her head even as every other part of her weakened, stopped. Her lips parted to allow words through but she didn’t have the air or the strength to push them out; she had nothing now. Feeling strength leave her slowly, she felt her body become limp, her arms falling from her chest heavily until she was suspended on her knees by the grip in her hair alone.

                Yanking her sideways, the knight dragged her off her knees and onto her side into the wet soil, his massive strength resonating through her as she realized yet again how easily he carried her weight. As he laid her out, he ripped the lightsaber from her torso with one violent yank, drawing his sword hand away widely.

                She barely felt the withdrawal of the weapon; she was already too far gone, she realized almost blankly. How strange that everything could be so much lighter when she was dying.

                Holstering the weapon in the rain, lightning streaked across the black sky and then this entire world was wrong. The sky was too dark, the lightning much too blinding. And as she was draped across the wet ground beneath, she looked up at the creature clad in black overhead, seeing him but somehow not understanding that it would be the same person that had made her feel so many things in the safety of her bedroom, in the stillness of Takodana. It wasn’t the same person, it wasn’t him-

                Releasing her hair, his touch was suddenly gentle, his hand lowering her head to the ground even as she felt nothing. And then, as her eyelashes fluttered wearily, as she saw his shadow move overhead blurrily, she felt him close. Him. The shadow in the night that had been a comfort to her, the man that didn’t exist. He was here now and she felt her brow lift in relief, her wounded arm splayed out beside her. Her other arm lifted, her hand searching for him blindly.

                And he was there then, no helmet, waves of black hair becoming damp and turning into wet curls in the rain. She clasped him by the face as he appeared overheard, as his pale face drew close to hers, his broad shoulders blocking the rain from blinding her. Seeing his familiar face, she released a sob in relief, her fingers trailing the hard bone of his cheek, the unsullied skin of the hollow just beneath.

                _No. There was something there before. There’s something there-_

                He was there, leaning over her and his face was gentle, his wet hair falling around his forehead and temples. “Tell me your name,” he whispered to her urgently, and he lifted his hand, now free of his glove, to her face, tracing it with long fingers. “Tell me your name.”

                She wept as she tangled her fingers in his hair, as she felt nothing else anywhere. How empty she felt, how numb. But how he made her want to feel something.

                “You know my name,” she cried, shaking her head in the wet ground, dragging her fingers down his jaw and curling to sweep her fingertips up along the underside of his chin. “You know my name-“           

                “Just tell me,” he said quickly, cutting her off. “Just tell me. Say it. Say it aloud.”

                She felt her body convulse unwillingly, her straining shoulders drawing up off the ground as she seized momentarily before falling back to the surface limply. There was liquid in her throat, in her mouth now, choking her; something warm and metallic tasting. Gasping, feeling the air run thin, she clawed her fingers into his chin desperately, gauged his face as he didn’t even seem to acknowledge the pain he must have felt.

                “Just say it,” he whispered and he dropped his forehead to hers, his breath warm even as raindrops fell from him onto her. “Just say it-“

                “Rey,” she uttered in a half cough, her name catching in her throat. “My name is Rey.”

                As if in relief, he exhaled in a rush, his hard frame falling onto her heavily. “Thank you,” he murmured, his head sliding, his lips slipping across hers with the words. “Thank you.”

                And then he streaked away from her, his entire form disappearing and taking his warmth with him.

                The rain suddenly pelted again, falling on her coldly, a downpour.

                But as her eyes fluttered open to search for him, he had straightened over her on his knees, his wild lightsaber in his grip once more.

                And as she struggled to come awake fully, he heaved the weapon up and stabbed the blade down clear through her and into the ground beneath.

 

                “That will be all,” a deep, heavy voice came from the side.

                Rey came awake with a gasp, her entire body stiffening across the cold, hard floor beneath. Choking, she scrambled away frantically, attempting to understand her surroundings, to temper herself and bring herself back to the situation at hand.

                The creature on the throne was vanishing away even as she raised her head to look at him, as she rolled over onto her knees to breathe heavily.

                And then she was alone in the room, his holographic form fading and leaving her in a hazy blue light with darkness all around at the edges of the spotlight she huddled in.

                A sound came from her lips, almost inhuman, and then another, this one a scream. And she continued to scream, to shriek into the darkness as she realized that she still had two perfect hands, as she understood that it had all been in her head. Bending her body to the floor, pressing her face to the cold floor, she shrieked into it until she no longer had a voice, until the screams had almost ripped her throat to shreds.

                And then she collapsed to the floor heavily and just gasped, tears flowing from her blind eyes, her entire body falling wearily into darkness.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Sixteen: **

She even wanted to see him, she realized, suddenly desperate for him. He would help her, he would fix whatever fever had overtaken her. Even if he had left her there in that cavernous room with the Supreme Leader, he would be able to put her back together now that she had been torn apart. The real him, not the man that had been in that nightmare in the room behind her. He could do it.

He could help her.

 


	17. Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen:

 

                The doors miraculously slid open under her palm as she finally made it down the long corridor to the console and a moment later she toppled out of the room to her hands and knees as her legs faltered. The world spun on her as she fell, as the sterile corridors swept past her dizzyingly, her head clouded. She couldn’t see anything, her heart racing in her chest, her blood pounding in her ears as it screamed through her veins.

                A red-haired man waited outside the doors as she heaved, as she fought to hold the contents of her stomach in even as her body fought to expel it. She raised her head numbly and he merely watched her as she breathed, as she allowed a soft sound to leave her lips.

                “He’s quite a handful, isn’t he?” he asked her with a small smile.

                She lifted her head to him shakily. Visions were swimming through her head, voices and whispers, blood and ashes. She didn’t understand what she was looking at, who he was, but as his smile widened she knew that he had not come to help her.

                The man shifted before her, gesturing, but she couldn’t keep her head raised. There was pain inside of her, a horrible pounding at her temples, and the visions wouldn’t stop; the rush of images, the sounds.

                _The screams-_

                Two pairs of booted white feet appeared before her fallen figure and she knew what they were but the pain in her head wouldn’t let her look up.

                “These guards will be escorting you back to your cell,” the man with the red hair said and his black boots moved to the side a bit, nearing. “You would appreciate the help, wouldn’t you?”

                She couldn’t speak. If she opened her mouth she was afraid that she would start screaming again and this time never stop. She trembled furiously instead, wobbling on her hands like a drunkard, only allowing another small sound to escape her.

                One of the guards circled around to her side and they were flanking her at each shoulder a moment later. She turned her head, the world spinning and then the entire floor dipped as two pairs of hands circled under her arms and yanked her up to her feet abruptly.

                The world didn’t catch up on time. Heaving, she could only push her feet out from under her before she tilted her head down and emptied the contents of her stomach on the shiny floor.

                The red-haired man grunted in irritation as she vomited, expelling the rations she had consumed in her cell. The waste splattered, catching him at the edges of his boots as he recoiled with a sound of disgust.

                It felt good to release the bile but her head still swam as she swung from the grip on her arms. The guards on either side of her were strong, firm. She let herself fall limply from their hold on her, a lifeless body in their grip. All she wanted was her bed. No, her cell at this point. She needed a surface on which to lay her head, to huddle on as she worked through the horrors burning through her body and head.

                “I just…I-” she whispered faintly, wincing.

                A hand streaked into her line of blurred vision and suddenly caught her by the chin in a tight, pinching grip, fingers digging into the hollows of her cheeks and yanking her head up. Did she have pressure sensitive points there? She winced, a stifled cry leaving her lips as pain flared, the corridor spinning as she was righted. Then the hand shoved, ripping her from the stormtroopers holding her and flinging her sideways in an abruptly violent gesture. She stumbled and fell, hitting the hard smooth floor roughly on hands and a hip.

                The pain was nothing compared to the nausea that rose once more, that threatened to come out of her mouth in another hot, stinging mess.

                “Take her to her cell!” the red-haired man ordered the troopers behind her as she shifted achingly.

                There came the shuffle of footsteps and then the arms appeared again, taking hold of her under her arms and yanking her up from the cool floor roughly.

                She wanted to stay on the floor, to press her burning hot forehead to its coolness and rest wearily. But she was hauled up wordlessly and had been dragged halfway down the corridor before the red-haired man spoke again, his tone shifting mercurially.

                “Wait.”

                The stormtroopers hesitated, leaving her hanging woozily between them.

                “Take her to his suite,” the red-haired man said instead, his voice dropping, a sly edge coloring his words. “I will send a droid with the override code. Deposit her inside his quarters.”

                Rey felt relief sweep over her, strangely enough. She knew who the red-haired man meant when he said “ _his_.” She almost craved the actual softness of a suite, the slide away from the coldness and sterility of the cell she had been held captive in. She found herself wanting the sight of his refresher, of the water spraying down on her, washing over her. Reviving her. She even wanted to see him, she realized, suddenly desperate for him. He would help her; he would fix whatever fever had overtaken her. Even if he had left her there in that cavernous room with the Supreme Leader, he would be able to put her back together now that she had been torn apart. The real him, not the man that had been in that nightmare in the room behind her. _He_ could do it.

                He could help her.

                _“I can’t hurt you. I won’t.”_

                “Let him know what it is to encounter a stranger in his house as he has done to us,” the red-haired man stated maliciously before turning on his heel and storming off down the corridor in the opposite direction.

                Rey heard his footfalls soften and wander as he left them but the hands under her arms did not loosen their hold. Instead, they did as he asked, pulling her along between them, her legs lifeless under her and dragging behind her numb figure.

                She did not pay attention to which direction they took nor how many floors lay between the room she had left and the floor her captor’s suite stood. She didn’t even realize that they had entered the familiar corridor until they stopped before a small droid waiting outside the knight’s quarters.

                “Override,” one of the stormtroopers ordered the droid firmly.

                The droid beeped and spun on small wheels, swiveling to the console beside the door and extending a long, spiked prong. The tip was inserted into the control panel, the droid emitting small beeps in the quiet that followed. The console responded with color a moment later, lighting up momentarily before the doors to the suite slid open with a hiss.

                The stormtroopers hesitated now that the door stood open.

                “Where do we put her?” the one on the left asked the other quietly.

                The second huffed in response. “I say we leave her right here.” He moved ahead, causing the other to scurry to catch up.

                Rey grimaced as she was dragged into the dark quarters of her captor. He was not in residence at the moment, the lights dimmed, the suite silent. A soft blue light came from the open doorway to the bedroom at the back of the main room, one that she recognized as the paleness of moonlight. And as she wearily lifted her head she realized that the wall of black glass in his bedroom had been windows all along, windows that now displayed a world of night outside, the tops of trees below as far as she could see.

                She suddenly wanted to weep for joy if not for the trembling that was beginning to rise inside of her again, the heat of bile, the dizziness. She finally had some context of time, she thought in overwhelming relief, her brow drawing up. She didn’t know how long she had already been held but she knew then that wherever they were, it was night time outside of her prison. The world still existed, the entire galaxy waiting outside the walls of the compound.

                She was suddenly released, the arms drawing away.

                She dropped to the floor like a bag of rocks, her chin smacking roughly and setting off stars behind her closed eyelids as she landed. The pain that streaked through her face and head only served to push the vertigo away for a moment, her mouth falling open in a silent cry.

                “Behave in here,” one of the troopers said to her with a spiteful snicker. And as the other made a soft chuckle of a sound, their footsteps withdrew, shuffling through the doorway and back into the corridor.

                The door slid shut with another beep from the droid and then she lay in darkness, stillness.

                She wanted the light of the moon, the coolness of the floor beneath her hands now that the flickering pain in her head was receding, though her chin and jaw burned still. She wanted the cold slab of her metal bed in her cell.

                No, she realized a moment later as the dizziness began to return and terror reached to cloud her thoughts once more, as memory also revisited her. She wanted her quarters on the Resistance base. She wanted the softness of her bed, the scent of her clean sheets. Finn’s familiar laughter and Poe’s side grin. BB8’s comforting beeps and the soft thrum as the droid would whip around her almost playfully.

                She wanted the General’s cheekiness and Luke’s quiet serenity that had slowly become a comfort as he had taken her on at last.

                She wanted her _home_.

                The refresher waited several feet away, barely visible out of the corner of her eye. She needed to cleanse herself, to wash away that monster’s voice, the hiss and the curl of it, the way it somehow still licked at her thoughts and soiled them, ruined her. And the more she found herself stained, the more desperately she needed the purging.

                _Take it away. Take it all away._

                And she slowly began to drag herself to Kylo Ren’s refresher.

               

                She had not been in her cell.

                At returning to the Supreme Leader’s communications room, he had found it empty of both the Supreme Leader and his charge. He had hesitated for a long while, his thoughts spinning out in immediate unease.

                She must have been taken away by the guards. The Supreme Leader would have known better; he would never have left a Force Sensitive alone with mere stormtroopers, not with all of his omniscient wisdom, and he would never have left her alone in a room without guards.

                He would have left her in the care of one that he commanded, one that followed his orders faithfully, almost religiously. One that would not have failed him.

                Hux had been aloof during his questioning, directing him to Phasma who, in turn, had been completely mystified when he had questioned her on the whereabouts of his charge. Now he stormed down the corridors of the base, dark clothing feeling somehow constricting. No alarm had sounded and there had been no missing crafts from their fleet. She was still on the base somewhere, hidden, veiling herself from him and from that oft-times irritating bond that they seemed to share.

                Once he had her in front of him again he would need to be more forceful with his instructions, demand that she fall in line or-

                The doors to his quarters slid open as he waved his hand over it and the first thing he saw was a shred of beige clothing on the floor just inside the doorway. He tilted his masked head down, pausing for a long fixed moment.

                Another piece of clothing, a white top, was strewn just outside the door to his refresher.

                Stepping in, he allowed the door to slide shut behind him with a hiss and he scanned his rooms warily as the light from the outside corridor was cut off. In darkness, his living suite was still, silent. But in the quiet, he heard the sounds of his refresher, of water falling loudly on the cold tile of his bathroom floor.

                He was going to kill her.

                How had she even gotten into his quarters? Who had given her access? She wouldn’t have had the chance unless she had mastered her skills to a certain point. To disrupt the circuitry, the flow of energy, the computer systems themselves, to allow her access was more of a task than she was ready for. This was beyond her capabilities at the moment which meant someone had let her _in_.

                Into his quarters, into his privacy. Into his very thoughts, he realized with a growl of simmering fury.

                Storming to the door of his refresher, he gestured at the console irritably, indifferent as to what state of undress he found her in. As the door slid open, he moved to enter, his anger already brimming.

               She was on her stomach on the floor, nude from the waist up besides the bands binding her breasts, and half of her was in the shower stall, a hand outstretched toward the falling stream just out of reach. The other half lay extended across his refresher floor and she was seemingly unconscious.

                He said her name in his head loudly in that moment, a silent shout, then again and again though it did not leave his mouth. With a grimace, he lifted his hands to the release of his helmet and tossed it aside as it came free, the helmet cracking loudly against the hard floor as it bounced out of the room into his main suite. A moment later he slid down to his knees beside her, turning her over onto her back and taking hold of her face between his gloved hands.

                She stirred slightly, the small wisps of hair around her temples damp from either the moisture in the air from the shower, or the sweat coming off her. She was half dazed, half shivering, even as her skin burned through his gloves.

                He should have known. He should have. She had been afraid to see the Supreme Leader, to be in his presence. When she had fallen silent in his head at last, he had assumed she had overcome what she had been experiencing; had come to terms with the Supreme Leader’s power and wisdom, had come to accept it, to not fight it.

                No. She had fought, absolutely. She had merely tamped it down and hidden herself away in her terror. And now, she suffered still. Here in his arms she was unwell, breaking apart, _failing_ ; this other person who was just like him, who could be something more, something extraordinary, something _essential_. His counterpart, his partner.

                His redemption. And he had done this to her.

                With a hard breath, he lowered her back to the floor and stripped himself of his belt and then the tunic of his uniform, the clothing beneath, until he was half nude as well. Stepping into the shower stall, he held a hand out to the water and then adjusted the temperature before returning to her once more.

                “Rey,” he said and her name was unfamiliar on his lips; he was unaccustomed to using it aloud though it was all that ever seemed to occupy his mental voice lately. Bending, he took hold of her beneath her arms and lifted her up off the floor and onto his chest in one swift movement, her legs dragging behind limply. She was a dead weight though not unmanageable as she collapsed on him, and he moved backward into the stall, her upper body cradled against his torso. The cold water hit his back as he moved into its path and then it fell on her, on her face, for he had it pressed to his chest.

                She stirred under the waterfall, grimacing and then fully reacting, her hands rising to dig into his waist, her legs finally beginning to shift.

                “Wait. Wait,” he said to her quietly, wincing under her fingers and nails as they jabbed into his skin, and he hefted her up onto him so that he was supporting her weight almost entirely on his chest and in his arms. Holding her with one arm wrapped tightly around her ribs and back, he lifted the other hand to her face as she sputtered at the icy water falling on her. “Wait.”

                His hand pushed her hair back from her face, swept water from her eyes before resting on her brow and urging her to look at him.

                Her light eyes finally came open though she blinked immediately as the spray of water fell into them, her lips falling open to breathe as well.

                And then her face crumbled completely, her shoulders suddenly shaking against his chest and not from the coldness of the water. He felt her mind rise again in the moment, sudden and strangely welcome. Her thoughts swarmed into a frenzy in his own head once more, loud and desperate, a cacophony of words that escalated into hysterical, deafening screams.

                The sudden vision of himself standing over her with his lightsaber drawn as he had run her through in the rain, as he had demanded her name; as he had taken her dying body in his arms and then pleaded for her to name herself.

                “He made you see me,” he whispered numbly, clutching at her now just as she held him. “He made you see me…and you gave him your name…”

                Her eyes closed against his palm and she wept silently, her entire body quaking. “It wasn’t you. It wasn’t you. I know it wasn’t you,” she uttered helplessly and she shook her head as she whispered it, as she curled her fingertips into his ribs and back. 

                “But you gave him your name,” he demanded and he felt his form fall heavily in defeat, felt his hands clutch her tighter even as he wanted to collapse weakly. “You gave him your-“

                “It’s not my name,” she sighed and she shook her head under his hand, pushing her face into his palm. “It isn’t my name. I don’t know my name, I never have. I never have-“

                “But it’s the only name you know,” he said to her softly, flicking water away from her face as she settled against him wearily. “It’s the only name you’ve ever known which means it’s your name.” And he looked around his refresher as if he could find an answer in the stall, as if the walls held an answer.

                Some way to hold off the avalanche that was slowly forming.

                She shivered against his torso, in his arms. “Ben, don’t make me see him again. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go,” she pleaded quietly and her head slid from his hand to fall like a lead weight on his chest, her slender torso trembling in his embrace.

                And he knew that the hot liquid he felt fall along the planes of his chest was not from the shower but from her as she cried wearily against him.

                With a pang in his chest, painful enough that he thought for a moment that something had stabbed into him, he felt himself descend to his knees in the shower stall, taking her with him. She slid down to the tiled floor, her legs seemingly lifeless once more as she fell and then merely wrapped her arms around his waist to cry into his lap.

                He bent over her silently, his back taking the water and feeling it rush down his spine to soak into his trousers as he cradled her on his knees, her face pressed into his side as she wept. Her shoulders were slim under his hand though they shook with force, her ribs becoming hard protrusions through her tanned skin as she heaved.

                “You’re okay,” he said blankly through numb lips, aware in the moment that her mental screams had dimmed in his head to skittish whispers, periods of blackness before words were borne again in fear, in agony. “You’re okay.”

                He sat in the cold spray of his shower as she cried herself into stillness, conscious of every emotion she felt and every horror that he had allowed her to experience when he had brought her to his home.

                And in that space of time, that instant that became an eternity, as her tears slowed in hopelessness and then became a weary sleep, he hated himself.

 

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Seventeen: **

This was the Dark Side then, she understood dimly. This was what the Dark Side users felt, it had to be; complete emotion, desire. Everything fanatical and full of passion. This was what it felt like.

And she hated it as it threatened to take her over against her will.

 


	18. Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen:

 

                Rey stirred, her brow falling into a slow frown. Her entire body hurt as if she had been put through a heavy training, soreness running down her limbs and torso. Even her head hurt. As her eyes came open she saw the morning sky outside the wall of transparisteel in the early stages of lightening.

                That wasn’t her window at all.

                “It’s mine.”

                Kylo Ren’s deep voice came from the corner of the room and she reflexively sat up from where she lay in his bed, her eyes shooting in the direction his voice had come from.

               He sat on a cushioned seat in the farthest corner of the bedroom, clothed in his heavy black garb, his helmet strangely absent. As she stared, he lifted his head toward her, dark hair waving around his long face, his expression blank as he met her eyes.

                But as she gaped at him she felt everything come back to her; her introduction to the Supreme Leader, the evil that he had held inside, the darkness and visions that he had made her see, that he had pushed upon her in the form of the Commander himself until she had suffocated from it.

                And then she remembered seeing the turn of Kylo Ren’s back as he had walked out through the Supreme Leader’s doors even as she had pleaded with him not to leave her.

                “Control it-” Ren suddenly barked with a warning in his voice, his body streaking up from the seat.

                She didn’t even hear him. Her heart had dropped out from under her and the terror rose in her like a tsunami, burning every part of her on the way up, searing. She realized a moment later that the hot waves rising were also threatening to physically come out and she took hold of the side of the mattress and leaned over the edge.

                Just as the bile rose in her throat, a small black tub was shoved across the floor to rest in front of her. She choked up the very little contents of her stomach into the small container, heaving, her chest threatening to crack under the pressure.

                Ren’s foot was off at the corner of her vision as it stopped swimming and she choked up a bit more bile before spitting that small amount that remained in her mouth. Panting into the tub, her fingers squeezed the side of the bed tightly, her arms trembling and she was suddenly furious with him, with herself.

                “How could you leave me there?” she demanded hoarsely, her head still turned down into the wastebasket, her eyes skimming over the bile and waste she had coughed up blindly.

                The foot shifted and then turned, disappearing from her sight. She heard him shuffle off back toward the corner he had just occupied before she had thrown up.

                The anger merely fanned brighter. Lifting herself back from the edge of the bed, she turned to look at him over her shoulder as he paused just before the seat though he didn’t lower himself into it. “Answer me!” she shouted at his back, tears beginning to rise in her eyes. “How could you leave me there? How could you just walk _away_ -“

                He whirled to face her, a dark frown on his face. “What did you think I would do?” he asked her monotonously, his tone flat in the face of her anger. “Come back for you? _Protect_ you? Disagree with the Supreme Leader’s methods?” He almost seemed to laugh at her, a single smirk. “This is not your precious Resistance, scavenger. You have no friends here. You have _nothing_ here.”

                She glared at him for a long moment, one that caused the tension in the room to become almost palpable. She saw nothing in his eyes, in the way he held his body.

                Turning her head, she dropped it back toward the tub, running her gaze over the contents she had spilled into it. “I thought I, at least, had you,” she whispered, low enough that she hoped he had not heard or understood.

                But he surprised her yet again as he returned in just as soft a tone, “You were wrong.”

                As she lifted her head toward him once more he turned to look at her. He seemed to weigh her, his eyes sweeping over her body in his bed.

                “Do not mistake my pity for compassion. You will be disappointed,” he stated to her quietly. And as she recoiled slightly at his words, he was moving, storming to the doorway, speaking dismissively. “Clean yourself up and wash out that wastebasket,” he ordered her coldly as he went. “I will return for you. Do not keep me waiting.”

                “Where are you going to take me?” she asked after him, her voice pitching louder as he left the room.

                He didn’t respond though he picked something up off a side table on the way. His helmet, black and cold. A moment later the door to his quarters slid open to permit his departure. They slid shut with a hiss after he had gone and she was left alone in his living suite.

                As she wearily turned her head back down to the tub, she only realized in that moment that she was completely nude under his covers.

 

                Kylo Ren entered the console room of the base, every step burning with fury. He had seen the surveillance records he kept of his quarters and had accessed the data from the corridor just outside his rooms. There were two troopers he had an appointment with but before he located them, he had a few choice words to exchange with Hux.

                He had expected the Supreme Leader’s meeting with the scavenger to be difficult. He remembered what his earlier meetings with Snoke had been like; the slow advance of darkness, the flattering words and promises, the images the Supreme Leader had shown him. But he had not expected Snoke to be as brutal as he had with Rey; to come down on her as he had.

                And he especially had not wanted her to be so weakened that she hadn’t even been able to defend herself from a pair of stormtroopers and Hux.

                The red-headed General turned as Ren stalked toward him, conversing with Phasma at his side. As he neared, the Captain turned as well, light gleaming across the smooth chrome of her armor.

                “Ah, Ren. There you are,” Hux stated. “I was meaning to-”

                The knight had his lightsaber in his hand a moment later, activating it with one step and slicing it through the air to hover the tip at Hux’s neck. Had Hux not recoiled in the moment, he would’ve severed the General’s throat and he was not surprised at how he relished the idea of it then.

                A shame the General had good reflexes.

                The console room staff fell into silence, the only sound the soft hum of the computers and the reverberating buzz of the red lightsaber at their General’s throat.

                “Captain,” Ren said quietly.

                Phasma stirred from her frozen position. “Commander,” she returned almost courteously after a tense moment.

                “I wish to locate two of your stormtroopers and I require your assistance with that,” he said, his eyes fixed on Hux’s pale face from beneath his helmet, his grip on the saber tight, his arm motionless.

                “I will assist you,” the Captain stated warily.

                Hux’s eyes slid from the Captain to Ren, his expression murderous.

                Breathing in deeply, Kylo Ren reached inside for that font of patience that had become stronger with the scavenger now in such close proximity. “The next time, I will not have you disrespect her the way you did yesterday,” he said to Hux quietly, his voice low and controlled, knowing full well that Hux immediately discerned the person he spoke of. “You will treat her as what she is. My apprentice.”

                Hux’s brow furrowed in surprise over the glow of the saber at his throat, his eyes widening.

                “And you will show her the same amount of _respect_ that you show me of _fear_ ,” he hissed at the General. “Or I will come for you again and the next time, it will not end as well.”

                The General’s mouth tightened into a firm and furious line, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.

                Hesitating just that second more, enjoying the thrill of holding someone at saber’s edge, Ren extinguished the blade and lowered his arm. His head turned toward the Captain and he cocked it at her. “If you would assist me now, Captain,” he said, his tone brooking no alternative.

 

                When he found the pair of stormtroopers, they were in the midst of their daily rounds on one of the lower levels just as the Captain had said when she had searched for them in the daily schedule.

                Ren had not given Rey an exact time frame in which he would return for her but it was all the same. He would not take long.

                Seeing the pair of guards turn the corner ahead, he calmly made his way after them, moving silently.

                The stormtroopers only became aware of his presence when they heard the hum of his lightsaber come alive. Even as they turned, he was swinging.

                He took the head off one neatly, instantly cauterizing the stump.

                The other trooper immediately stumbled backward as Ren turned to him.

                Without a word, he swept the saber in a wide arc, severing an arm before spinning and running the lightsaber into the trooper’s chest plate and clear through him to stab into the wall at his back.

                He was not surprised that the act did not make him feel better, though in the moment his anger was tempered.

                Drawing the saber back, he watched as the trooper fell to the floor lifelessly beside his headless partner.

                Lifting his masked face, Ren turned to the surveillance camera in the corner of the hallway and stared up behind the metal helmet.

                Now he would return to Rey.

 

                Hux turned his head toward Phasma as she mirrored him behind her chrome mask. On the screen in the console, Ren had his shielded face turned up toward the screen, his lightsaber blazing wildly in his hand. The two stormtroopers lay strewn about in the hallway, limbs and head severed at the feet of the Master of the Knights of Ren.

                Furiously, Hux turned back to the console and he brought a fist down on it loudly, circuits fizzing as they became damaged under his hand.

 

                Rey was dressed and waiting for him when he returned to the room silently. He had left her a uniform of sorts; black trousers and a black hooded sleeveless tunic with a gray sash. Now as he entered his quarters, she jumped up from the edge of the bed where she had been perched anxiously. “Where have you been? Where are my clothes?” she demanded from his bedroom as the door slid shut behind his tall frame.

                He turned that masked face toward her, seeming to size her up for a long moment; long enough that Rey wondered if he would become angry with her again that she continued to question him. “Destroyed,” he replied bluntly instead and he crossed his living suite toward her.

                “Destroyed?” she echoed incredulously, still standing in the middle of his bedroom. She feared getting any closer for her hand was itching to hit something. She pulled at the neck of the tunic she wore in an irritated gesture to calm the urge. “I can’t _wear_ this!”

                Ren neared as she shouted, his steps nearly soundless. “Not your color?” he asked in an emotionless tone though Rey could read the cheekiness in his words. “Did you clean out the wastebasket?”

                For a moment Rey was frozen in her disbelief. Then hot resentment erupted through it, causing her to move erratically. She darted to the side of the bed where the clean tub rested and she swiped it off the floor, turning and flinging it at the knight. “This stupid thing?” she demanded heatedly, her voice pitching high.

                Ren batted it aside easily, not even seeming to register the sound the tub made as it crashed loudly against his bedroom floor and bounced away.

                Rey followed the initial flight of the wastebasket, coming at him in fury. He didn’t swat her aside as he had the tub though and she collided with him a moment later, her hands clenching into fists and coming down on his chest angrily.

                She was in a rage. All those times that he had appeared in her dreams, wrathful and exquisitely violent, she had allowed him to have his way with her even as she had begun to enjoy it. Now she would exact her revenge on this man instead, this _stranger_. “You left me _alone_ with him! You let him _do_ things to me, to my _head-”_

                Kylo Ren fell back a step at the force of her anger, his hands lifting to take hold of her wrists as she attempted to bring them down on his chest again.

                “You knew he would try to break me and you let him! You _let_ him-” she shrieked at his helmet through clenched teeth, her body beginning to tremble from her fury.

                “But he didn’t quite succeed, did he?” Ren returned smoothly in that strangely automated voice, his hands like vises on her wrists. “You seem very much alive, intact. In your own mind, even-”

                She refused to hear it then, moving far ahead. “Take it off,” she hissed up at him, causing him to break off in mid-sentence. As he stared down at her behind the metal, she said it again, her teeth gritting. “Take off that mask. I want to speak to the man that left me alone in that room for that…that _thing_ to tear me apart! Show me the face of that _coward_.”

                His hands on her wrists tightened enough to bruise.

                She didn’t care. With a narrowing of her eyes, she reached in deep and then wide, grasping. And as she felt the small tingle inside, she dropped her stare to the mechanism along the lip of the helmet.

                The helm released with a soft breath of air, coming loose.

                Even as she felt surprise and then satisfaction that it had worked, she also felt the utter irritation that rolled off the knight. He made a small frustrated sound before releasing one of her wrists. His hand rose and swiped the helmet off in an exasperated gesture and then he was facing her directly, all dark wavy hair and eyes, tight jaw and deep scar.

                She hated him. In that moment she hated that face of his that was perfect with all of its imperfections, and everything he had done to her leading up to that point in time. She hated him, hated her dreams for making her realize that he could bring her to tremble under his touch, that he could make her fall under that same hand.

                And she suddenly hated herself for somehow believing that he could be an ally in a place like this. All he had ever shown her in her dreams was that he was dark, selfish, _brutal_. In the waking world, he had shown himself to be no different. It was her own body that had betrayed her, and it had taken her head with it as she had fallen, making her believe things that were just not true here. This was his home and this was where he endured. He didn’t exist as a real person, not the way he had in her dreams, in her bed.

                That person had never been real.

                His eyes dropped to her lips momentarily before flying back to meet her light gaze. “What do you see, scavenger?” he asked her almost inaudibly and the words were deceptively inquisitive for only unemotional darkness shone in his stare.

                She didn’t know how to respond to that but her eyes fell to her hands. He held one of her wrists still but the other hand, once it had been released, had fallen to his chest. The material was coarse under her palm, like the feel of burlap, just as it had felt in her dreams and just as rough as the man who wore it. She stared then, suddenly seeing too much, realizing more than she should have in that moment, in any moment.

                “Do you see the man you speak of? The coward?” he asked her. His tone dropped, deep and still as smooth waters, running beneath the ethereal world that she was somehow slipping into. Vanishing into the cool pool beneath that calm surface that was his voice. “Or do you finally see the truth that you don’t wish to face-”

                “I see someone who was betrayed as a boy,” she said mechanically, sightlessly.

                His entire body became rigid under her hand, his fingers clawing into her wrist.

                She winced faintly at the pain though it suddenly felt so far away from her, her hand trembling in his grip even as he didn’t acknowledge it. She didn’t know where the words had come from but they had obviously struck a chord with him. She continued, her voice shaking no matter how she tried to control it. “I see a child who didn’t receive the attention all children deserve,” she uttered and as she raised her eyes to meet his black stare, she saw things behind her clear gaze, strange visions that she didn’t want to see, and she was blind to him standing before her. “I see a boy who couldn’t…find his place in the world because…”

                His breathing had altered, had quickened as she had begun to speak and now his chest vibrated under her palm.

                “Because his parents couldn’t change their nature no matter how much they _loved_ ,” she whispered achingly and she couldn’t see him anymore even though he was right in front of her, his body stiff beneath her hand. She suddenly saw Han Solo; she saw the General that had once been known only as a princess, but always a freedom fighter. “I see a father who couldn’t devote himself because old habits die hard. And a mother who couldn’t just stand by and let darkness win again and _again_ , and continue to take people over-” She grimaced faintly, giving a quick shake of her head as she tried to understand, as she felt the regret wash over her. “Even though everyone makes their own choices and then has to live with them-”

                The knight’s chest was heaving beneath her hand and she felt herself curl her fingers dimly into that rough weave as if to console him, to soften him.

                “I see a boy who…who…” She frowned and then leaned toward him, searching instinctively for the truth that suddenly seemed to evade her, searching his thoughts, his past. “A boy who…didn’t fit in. Who was so small and so innocent and was corrupted from even before birth. Born into such a dynasty and you still couldn’t be saved-” She closed her eyes, snapping her head away curtly as her voice dropped away into a whisper. “Of course he would come for you. Of _course_ he would-”

                The knight yanked on her wrist, effectively snapping her out of her haze. “He _who_? _What do you see?_ ” he thundered.

                Rey winced at the fingers digging into her skin, finally becoming aware once more. She stood before the Master of the Knights of Ren in his dim and melancholic room, and her anger had abated in the last few moments though she didn’t understand what had just happened. “N-nothing. _Nothing!_ I don’t see anything! Let _go_ of me-” she growled at him and she was herself again, her lips turning down into a scowl.

                The expression on his face brought her to a complete stop.

                He seemed lost, even a bit broken.

                She blinked up at him, her eyes searching his before falling to his mouth only to drift upward again.

                He returned the gaze, though as he stared at her awareness re-entered those dark eyes. Blinking, he dropped his head away, suddenly avoiding her stare. His hand released her wrist and he stepped away from her, forcing her hand to drop from his chest.

                “Your clothes have been destroyed. That is what I have for you to dress yourself in,” he said to her numbly, his mouth barely moving with his words.

                She stared at him still, her lips parting. She felt suddenly bereft as if he had taken everything with him when he had stepped away from her.

                “We should speak on what happened yesterday,” he murmured and he turned from her to walk slowly back into the living quarters.

                Rey swallowed painfully, cradling her wrist in her other hand. He had gripped her hard enough to leave her bruised but she barely gave that any thought in the moment. “W-what do you mean?” she asked dimly, taking a step to follow.

                He had reached the sofa in his living suite and as she spoke he lowered his helm to the side table quietly, setting it down. It faced her now and it unsettled her to stare the front of it head on.

                “Tell me what you remember from yesterday,” he said and he pointed to the sofa with a gloved finger.

                She recoiled, indignation rising within her once more. “I’m not sitting there and I’m _not_ going to speak on what happened because I don’t remember,” she stated roughly at him. “Maybe _you_ should tell _me_ what happened! And explain why I ended up completely naked in your bed!” She motioned back toward the bedroom, gesturing angrily.

                He turned quickly to stare at her, an expression akin to disbelief crossing his face. “You…were naked because I undressed you,” he stated blatantly, a deep scowl coming over his face.

                “Why did you undress me?” she demanded. “Did you take advantage of me?”

                He came at her irately then. “I would never do such a thing,” he growled at her, invading her space as he leaned down to bark at her. “I found you in my quarters, in the refresher, unconscious. Half of your clothes were missing and I nursed you throughout the night! Your clothes were wet as were mine! I merely undressed you and then put you to bed, to _my_ bed!” he hissed, motioning around her shoulder back toward his bedroom with a long sweep of his arm and a pointed, gloved finger.

                She stared up at him, refusing to back down in the face of his anger as his arm fell back to his side, swinging far too close to her. He had almost a foot on her and his shoulders were broad enough that she felt completely dwarfed by him even though she was not a tiny person.

                He seemed to sense her stubbornness and he leaned just that inch more, face close enough that she felt the heat from his skin. “Now tell me what you remember from yesterday,” he ordered in a growl.

                Her eyes dropped from his dark glare to his mouth before returning, her lips tightening. “I am not afraid of you,” she said to him softly, light eyes narrowing. “I feel it, in my head. That’s what you want. You want me to be afraid, to fear you. Just as everyone else on this base does. But I won’t do it. I won’t give you that satisfaction,” she snarled and she leaned her head forward as well, invading his space as he had hers.

                He measured her for a long silent moment, one that caused an uneasy sensation to slip down her spine. Then his gaze dropped to her lips and the corner of his mouth quirked. “You already have,” he said to her softly and he raised a gloved hand, taking hold of her jaw, his thumb grazing her lip and sliding down to her chin. His face registered the slight wince that shifted across her cheeks as his thumb pressed into it, into the slight purpled spot at the base, received from when the stormtroopers had dropped her in his quarters. But the expression shifted away a moment later, his touch lightening slightly, leaving her with the flash of memory of the dream when he had run his gloved thumb over her bottom lip, when she had tasted the leather on her tongue.

                One of the very first dreams she’d had of him.

                “You’ve shown me your fear already, tiny little glimpses of it,” he murmured, raising his dark stare again to hers. “Fear, when I took you to see the Supreme Leader. Fear, when I-”

                Rey reflexively shivered at the mention of the creature in that terrible room and Ren’s eyes dropped to her mouth and then lower to sweep her body before shooting back up.

                “-left you there with him,” he continued, his tone deepening. “Fear that I would not return for you, that I had left you to wither and die in that room that you keep seeing in your head-”

                Her anger broke through the panic that had begun to rise inside of her. _“Stay out of my head!”_ she shouted furiously, her pulse quickening.

                “Then stay out of mine!” he tossed back at her instantly, and he flung her chin aside, drawing his hand to his side once more.

                She blinked at him, recoiling. “What?” she asked dumbly, lost. She’d had a moment, a _weak_ moment, where his touch had done things to her deep inside, had set her body aflame, and now she found herself confused at his words, confused in their argument.

                With a last glare he turned from her, moving back toward his helmet on the side table.

                “I’m not in your head!” she snapped at his back, eyes taking in the fall of his surcoat blindly, the black hair as it curled along the material covering the nape of his neck. “I want _nothing_ to do with whatever miserable thoughts you have floating around in there-”

                “You think I don’t feel you in there?” he demanded, turning back to face her. “You think I don’t feel the little pitter-patter of your feet as you scurry around like a mouse inside? You are all I feel _in my head_ ,” he hissed, lifting a hand and jabbing at his temple so roughly that Rey felt her own head sting. “You are everywhere! You are in every thought I have, constantly distracting me, disrupting everything I do!”

                Rey blinked at him in disbelief, the color draining from her face.

                “You are never silent! Never!” he shouted at her and the fear that she had told him she didn’t feel for him was suddenly present as he clenched his hands into fists, his shoulders beginning to heave. “Every moment of every hour that you are here, you are _plotting_ , planning your escape.” He cocked his head, his eyes narrowing humorlessly. “And no, you would not be able to smuggle yourself out in one of our vessels. You wouldn’t even be able to make it into the hangar bay. You don’t have the clearance to open any doors here.”

                Her breath quickened, her lips parting.

               “The only reason you are even here, given even the _smallest_ consideration, is through _my_ doing,” he said to her and his voice fell dangerously, his dark eyes piercing. “You are still alive because of what I see in you, the potential that you possess. It is the only reason you haven’t been _executed_.”

                Silence fell between them but it was short-lived as Rey gave a short bark of a humorless laugh. “Am I to thank you, then?” she asked in astonishment, in shocked anger. “Is that what you’re waiting for?” She crossed the room after him and a thrill went through her when he recoiled as she advanced. “Do you want me to thank you for ripping me away from the only home that I have ever known, from the only people I have ever had in my life who cared about me? Is that what you want? Do you want me to _thank_ you for that?” she demanded. “Or do you want me to thank you for taking me away and _imprisoning_ me, for making me face _horrors_ from that monster that you consider your _Supreme Leader_? Do you want my thanks for that? Tell me what you would like me to thank you for, Ben!” she shouted at him, her voice echoing in the silence of his living quarters. “Tell me!”

                And in the next moment, as his head turned away from hers, she suddenly _saw_.

                His anger was palpable, as strong as hers, stronger even as it flared at her use of his birth name. It pulsed between them, arcing, sparking. But it was somehow the _same_ anger, the same single emotion that they split. She was furious and so was he, for different reasons but still enough to have them itching to rip into each other until there was nothing left for the other to consume or bury.

                But she could see the emotion, red-hot in color, flaring and erratic, as wild as his lightsaber when ignited. It was a strange visualization in her head, in _his_ head as they both saw it.

                They were _sharing_ the same emotion and neither could tell who it had originated from, only that it tied them in that moment.

                She staggered backward, causing his head to snap back up toward her. As she took another step away from it, from _him_ , he was suddenly advancing, intent forming on his face, the deep line of his scar seeming to ripple as he grimaced.

                “You see it,” he whispered and he drew near, attempting to close the distance between them. “You _see_ it-”

                She fled from him, throwing a hand up to stop his approach in mid-step as she darted away blindly. She needed space from him then, physical space, _mental_ space. She saw the strange arcing bond of fire, of anger, between them and she suddenly wanted it gone, diminished.

                _Eradicated_.

                _“Get away from me!”_ The scream tore from her, frantic.

                Kylo Ren froze in his tracks.

                Still retreating in panic, Rey closed her eyes and promptly ran into the wall. The impact was sudden, pain stinging through her but it didn’t stop her from still attempting to flee. Slapping her hands along the wall frantically, she felt her legs give slightly and she slid against the cold metallic surface, clambering for support.

                Ren stood exactly where he had stopped, his eyes fixed on her as she staggered blindly along the length of his main room.

               “What is that?” she cried wildly, pushing her spine against the wall and sliding along its cool face as far away from him as the room allowed. That strange fire remained, connecting her to him eerily even as the link became paler, translucent, though she felt deep inside that even if that connection disappeared, she would still feel him within. All around.

                Always.

                “What is that?” she demanded again, bordering on hysteria.

                “I don’t know,” he responded rapidly, watching her the way one watched a cornered animal. His eyes dropped slightly before returning to her face. “Or…I think I know but I can’t…I can’t be certain. I’ve never experienced it. I don’t think anyone ever has-”

                _“What is it!?”_

                “A Force Bond,” he replied shortly. “I…I believe it’s a Force Bond.”

                She stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “A _what_ _?_ W-what is a Force Bond? And how do we get rid of it?” she asked tremulously, her body heaving, because he obviously saw it as she did, felt its connection as she did.

                “I don’t know,” he said just as quietly. “I don’t think we can.”

                Rey closed her eyes once more, tightly now, paling in the face of his words. “No,” she murmured, shaking her head, breathing as if to center herself. “No. There has to be a way. There has to be some way to get rid of this…this _thing-_ ”

                She suddenly broke off, her face straining as she caught the smallest shred of something in their ethereal connection, the tiniest thread in a spool that had pulled at her from deep within, that had called to her. She frowned, her head carefully tilting as she grasped, as she dug in more. And then, seeming to find what she reached for, she suddenly heaved, her shoulders falling forward as if she had choked on something, as if pain had fallen upon her shoulders weightily. Realization, she understood with such pain that it immediately brought tears to her eyes, agony crashing down all around her, heavy and ruinous. “Oh… _Oh-_ ”

                The knight stared at her and there was the hint of uncertainty between them then, the shadow of reluctance.

                “The dreams,” she uttered in a strangled whisper and she slowly opened her eyes to look at him fearfully, her entire body willing him to tell her that it wasn’t true, that he hadn’t somehow betrayed her again.

                Kylo Ren closed his own eyes, his lips tightening into a firm line.

                Rey felt her body fall into a complete and utter wasteland of ice, coldness settling on her limbs, on every part of her body.

                Giving up. That’s what she was doing, she realized futilely. She was finally giving up. “No,” she moaned achingly and she hunched over wearily, angrily. Angry at herself, angry at him. Angry at a world that would give her so much and then strip it away and leave her broken and humiliated. “ _No_ -”

                He merely remained still, his eyes coming open though he didn’t look at her, his head bowed away. “I didn’t know,” he said quietly. “I thought they were just dreams. I thought that I…” He grimaced, hesitating. “I don’t know what I thought. Maybe that I was still trying to make sense of what happened on StarKiller Base.” He shook his head, dark waves falling across his forehead. “I was angry and I didn’t know-”

                His words caused her to recoil as she heard them, her light eyes lifting to him. “Angry?” she whispered in stunned disbelief that he would use such a small word to explain his visits to her, the dreams he had shared with her; the emotion that had suffocated them both when he would come to her. Because that was what this was; his visits to her, his intrusion into her life and into her dreams, the one place she had always thought herself safe.

                She had never dreamt of him. She had merely forged a connection with him when _he_ had come to _her_.

                Another moan left her as she bowed her head into her hands, as she rocked back and forth for a moment to center herself, to make sense of the entire thing. “You _hated_ me,” she spat, her voice sharpening into a weapon, her rage ratcheting so strongly it was almost palpable; she was sure something sparked in the room with such an effervescent heat. “You hated me and you still _came to me!_ You…you even hid your _face!_ Every time, _oh_ …” She bent again, her head hurting, her heart clenching as she felt a thickness in her chest, as it constricted and then grew so much that it took over her heart and lungs, almost choking her. “Every dream and you _hid your face!”_ she screamed and her heart was breaking suddenly. Fully. Painfully.

                Destructively.

                She wanted him to hurt then, wanted to see him suffer. Everything that had happened to her because of him, every single bad thing that she’d had to take, everything except being left behind on Jakku, it was his fault, entirely.

                _Everything_.

                He flinched, a grimace twisting his face.

                She came at him again with her words, aloud this time, and with her fury because her legs wouldn’t support her movements physically. “You _hated_ me,” she uttered again, her voice falling away into darkness, numbness.

                This was the Dark Side then, she understood dimly. This was what the Dark Side users felt, it had to be; complete emotion, desire. Everything fanatical and full of passion. This was what it felt like.

                And she hated it as it threatened to take her over against her will.

                “You _detested_ me,” she moaned, rocking back and forth slowly, “but you would still come to me. And that’s why you were so angry. I never knew, I never _understood_. But I do now. Because you don’t hate me, no. Not as much as you hate yourself,” she said and she raised her wrathful stare to him, her shoulders heaving with her breaths.

                _Make him hurt._

                He took a step back, wincing.

                “But you took it out on me,” she continued and she suddenly didn’t understand even as she felt herself begin to come apart. “Every night, you came to me, angrier and angrier, and you came to take it out on me. You used this…this _Force Bond_ , to find me and you _came_ to me. You came to me,” she said softly. “And you…you made me feel-” She broke off, heaving, and her legs wouldn’t hold her anymore. One more thing to betray her, she realized as she collapsed limply to the floor, aware that her rear would be bruised in the morning due to her legs’ disloyalty.

                She hated him and she had never hated anyone in her entire life.

                Kylo Ren looked at her and the strangest thing then was that the expression on his face tore her up inside.

                “I hate you,” she whispered, gazing at him weakly, helplessly now. There was nowhere else for her to go and even if there had been, her body wouldn’t have carried her there. She was physically and mentally, _emotionally_ , exhausted. “I hate you,” she said again, shaking her head wearily with the words.

                And his voice came softly, the breath of words caressing her mind. She trembled inside from the absolute effort it took to hold back her tears just hearing his voice so closely; to hear it and not think of the other intimate things he had made her feel once upon a dream.

                _I know._

                Without another word or thought, he turned, moving unsteadily. His hand took up the helmet from the side table and he didn’t look at her again as he raised it to his head, as he stormed to the door of his living quarters. The helm slipped onto his head, the lock hissing into place and he waved a hand in a wild gesture, disappearing through the doorway as the doors slid open, and out as if fleeing.

                Rey felt herself give as the doors swished closed behind him, no longer needing to hold herself up weakly, her body falling sideways onto her palms.

                _I hate you. I hate you._

                She closed her eyes tightly, trembling across his floor.

                _I hate you._

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Eighteen: **

But in the next moment, she merely cocked her head at the vision. How perfect, she realized abruptly. How it suited him. He was fire and rage, everything hot and red that would become black with soot when the flames were gone. He had blazed even in her dreams of him, warm hands against her cold fingers when he had held them, a searing heat when he had kissed her, when his broad frame had covered hers in the darkness of her dreams.

_I’m just as dark_ , she recognized a moment later. _There is no light in me._

 

 


	19. Chapter Eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are awesome, you all know this, right? The comments kill me every time, lol! Thank you!

Chapter Eighteen:

 

                It took hours for her to gather the strength to stand. Even then, after making her way to her legs feebly, she took a step and staggered, clinging to the wall with clawed fingers. She trembled as she struggled to hold herself up on her legs, but it just wasn’t worth it, she realized a second later. It wasn’t worth it.  

                How had this happened to her?

                _I’m stronger than this_ , she growled to herself, nails sliding ineffectively along the cold metal of the walls, the drag making a soft hiss along the surface. _I spent years on Jakku, alone. On my own. Why can’t I do this-_

                But even as she settled on her rear once more and leaned her forehead wearily on the smooth walls, she knew. She had felt something for the man that had visited her in her dreams. She had waited for him almost every night toward the end; every night for the last three months for him to come calling in all his rage, in all his wrathful glory.

                Three months?

                Why three months, she wondered, and the sudden thought distracted her momentarily, her fingers clawing on the floor at her sides as she sat in confusion. She looked around the dark room blindly, numbly, seeing nothing but more questions, more items belonging to him that somehow felt like betrayal upon betrayal. His very room seemed to mock her for having been so stupid, so naïve.

                She dragged herself back to her thoughts to turn her mind from his quarters. What happened that he had come for her, had begun to take such an interest in her three months ago when the battle at StarKiller had happened over six months earlier-

                _He was healing_.

                The words came suddenly and even in their abruptness, she realized that the voice was correct. He had been healing just as Finn had. She had practically laid waste to him in that hazy blur of a fight; of course he would need months to recover, though obviously not nearly as many months as Finn. Kylo Ren had spent years in battle; he had practically been forged in it. He was war torn but he was strong, brutal. He had derived strength from pain even when they had faced him on that snowy landscape. Pain was nothing to him.

                And then she felt her stomach turn again, iciness shooting through her and freezing her in place.

                She had spent all those months by Finn’s side and she thought she had imagined the pain, the agony, which used to creep through her at the strangest times. But it hadn’t been Finn. It had never been Finn.

                Pain was nothing to Kylo Ren, especially not when she had taken the weight of it for moments, for stretches of time.

                She saw it now, clear as day; the strange aches and pains, the sudden streaks of anguish that had overtaken her when she had spent hours beside Finn in his tank of bacta. Her back had hurt and she had assumed that she had been feeling some sort of sympathy pain but then her shoulder had ached, her side flaming. Even her jaw. The mere memory of it caused her to stretch her neck, to open her mouth and work the muscles.

                The amount of time she had spent trying to use the Force to somehow heal Finn when he had slept unconscious in the tank beside her. She had felt something then, had thought she had somehow succeeded only to see no change in him, nothing even in the monitors gauging his condition.

                It had worked, she realized dejectedly. Just not for the person she had been focused on. Across the galaxy, she had helped heal someone who had also been wounded and who had lain comatose for some time; one who couldn’t have healed himself because that sort of power required a person with a _soul_ , someone moral.

                Someone who believed in the Light.

                The pure anger that rose within threatened to overwhelm her to the point of combustion. Yet one more violation, she whispered in her head, her hands tightening into fists and coming down on the wall even as she let loose a shriek of bitterness in the silence, her cry echoing. Healing that monster, feeling his pain across such a vast distance and bearing it with him, _for_ him when he had occasionally surfaced from his deep sleep, as he had called desperately when it became too much for him to handle alone. How quickly things fell into place now that she understood that he had been alive, though heavily wounded, this entire time. How easily she could see the truth now.

                How painfully she could fall into despair at realizing that they had never stopped fighting, that their battle had never ended that day on StarKiller base when the snow had fallen gently around them and the only light in that winter landscape had been the clash of their lightsabers.

                How long would she have to fight and endure?

                Blinking, her lips parted as she tried to suck in air, as she tried to calm her suddenly pounding heart. The rage was coming again and she was so tired of feeling it that she didn’t even know what to do, whether her body could even take it. She was spent of emotion and somehow it was rising again within her and all she wanted to do was curl into a ball and beg it all to go away, to leave her alone. To let her sleep.

                To let him bear some of it as she had for him. For once, for _once_ , to make him pay for her pain.

                Wearily, she turned her head and looked toward the knight’s bedroom.

                He had left the door open to that part of his suite and she stared blankly at it for a long moment, her breathing stirring her torso with each inhalation. From where she sat she could see the edge of the bedding, the feet of the pallet, the dim light coming from the day outside. The opacity in the transparisteel windows could be modified, she had realized earlier when he had left her alone after caring for her throughout the night. She had found the small console and even that hadn’t responded to her commands when she had attempted to work the damn thing. Now the room was dark, though still lit with a blue light. Whichever planet they currently resided on, it had two moons but their light did not reach far, it seemed.

                She wanted to see the sun. She wanted to feel the breeze outside, wanted to taste it on her tongue. She wanted the warmth of the sun’s rays on her face, not as it had beamed on Jakku but the way it had felt on Takodana when she had stood between trees at times and felt the slant of warmth fall on her.

                Takodana, she whispered to herself, her head falling to the wall once more as she stared into Kylo Ren’s bedroom blindly. He had come to her in her dreams, had flown to her as if she had been a beacon in the night, and she had foolishly told him the name of the planet when they had stood in the forests. He had looked around, had surveyed the area when she had given the location of the Resistance base away in a dream, and she felt a sob catch in her throat as she realized that she had brought all of this down on the Resistance. She had done this to them because of some stupid dreams, because she had been so trusting and so naïve.

                And now she was so cold sitting in his main room, in this darkness, that she almost believed that she didn’t remember what heat felt like. Even the sheets on the bed seemed as if they would feel cool, she thought as she looked at them. Everything was cold. _Cold_. Why was everything so dark and cold here? Why couldn’t they afford her any warmth, any light? How long before she would feel that sun on her skin again, see the brightness through the slits between her fingers as she raised them to the light overhead?

                _I just want to feel warm again._

                A spark ignited in her head dimly and she found herself reaching for it mentally, her fingers itching to feel its warmth. Not too far off the new Resistance base on Takodana, she, Finn, and Poe had gone out that one evening, the same evening when she had given away their location in a dream, and set the small fire in a clearing. They had warmed themselves to it, had told stories around its flames and heat. Finn had lit up around Poe, had looked at her with such affection as well that she’d felt then that she would never again feel the cold, not when she had such friends and such blessings in her life.

                Now it was all she felt and she found herself remembering the fire that night, how she had lifted her hands to it to warm her fingers for they were always the first parts of her to grow cold. Poe had even taken one of her hands and rubbed it in a futile attempt to warm it.

                _“You’re so warm! You hold this hand. Finn, hold my other one!”_

                Tears rose in her eyes merely remembering it and she reached out blindly, seeing the fire in her memory, feeling it as if it loomed near. Her hand was a pale blue in the darkness of the room but as she reached, she almost believed she could feel the fire still.

                _Please. I’m so cold. This place is so cold._

                A flickering light came from the bedroom past the image of her reaching blue fingers and she frowned, her eyes darting toward the glow.

                There. Light. Light could bring warmth and she needed it to the deepest reaches of her soul.

                Feeling desperation, Rey pulled herself to her feet gingerly, reminded of that same terrible weariness in her limbs when they wavered under her. Grimacing, she rose on shaking legs and staggered toward the bedroom doorway, wanting that light. Reaching for it physically and mentally.

                Coming to the doorway of the knight’s bedroom, she came to a slow blank stop.

                The center of Kylo Ren’s bed was on fire.

                She didn’t understand it at first, couldn’t seem to place the idea that someone’s belongings, a bed in this instance, had been set aflame.

                But in the next moment, she merely cocked her head at the vision. How perfect, she realized abruptly. How it suited him. He was fire and rage, everything hot and red that would become black with soot when the flames were gone. He had blazed even in her dreams of him, warm hands against her cold fingers when he had held them, a searing heat when he had kissed her, when his broad frame had covered hers in the darkness of her dreams.

                _I’m just as dark_ , she recognized a moment later. _There is no light in me._

                The anger rose suddenly and completely, almost bowling her over in its ferocity. The fury and the hate came with it, riding the wave until her weakness left her standing in nothing but animosity and wrath. Staring at the fire, feeling the rage, she breathed life into the flames licking at the sheets blindly, lapping at the bedding. She fanned her anger as she did the fire, her light eyes following the blaze and reflecting their heat as they rose, as they reached for more. As it began to spread across the pallet, eating away at the bed.

                _Take it all. Consume it all._

                She waited as it grew larger, as it reached the edges of the mattress and then began to move toward the legs beneath. The bed was not low to the floor but the fire was spreading with such speed, rising, that it would be only moments before it reached the four legs. But metal. Metal wouldn’t catch the way wood could, the way she needed it to.

                Looking around, she searched for something else, something flammable, something that could be eaten by flames and fury. But she saw nothing even as she realized that she was searching blankly, that she was half blind. This wasn’t her, she understood almost feebly, as she returned her gaze back to the bed.

                The bedding.

                Her eyes followed the lining of the sheets and the comforter, how easily the flames ate up the soft material.

                Darting forward, she took hold of the sheets and yanked them, grimacing when the flames licked in her direction. Clutching an edge of the blanket in her fists, she dragged a half burned end off and dragged it across the cold metal floor underfoot, moving back toward the main living suite.

                This was where she had been coldest, where he had treated her the iciest.

                Stretching, she dragged the sheet up and onto the couch in the middle of the room, draping it carefully across the surface and then stepping away to watch, to urge it soundlessly.

                _Take the cold away. Take everything away._

                The couch caught within a matter of seconds and suddenly the room was light, lighter than it had been mere moments before. Lighter than it had been when he had still been here. A sob rose in her chest at the warmth, at the clarity of the glow, how it reminded her of that night in the Takodana woods. How happy she had been.

                _Please take this darkness away. Please take me home._

                She stood watching the flames as they consumed the couch, as the fire grew in height, as it stood in an island of a bonfire in the middle of the room. How beautiful. How dark. How pure.

                _This is who I am. Light and Dark, then._

                A sudden high-pitched shriek cut the heaviness in the room, the silence in her head. Rey’s hands flew to her ears in pain, her jaw dropping open as she bowed over for a moment before righting herself and searching out the sound.

                _An alarm. It’s an alarm._

                And the moment after that, she suddenly realized what was happening, snapping back to herself almost violently.

                _The room is on fire._

                Sure enough, the flaming couch caught to the small table to the left, setting it aflame and eating up the legs enough to topple it to the floor. The light fixture smashed upon impact, the wooden table burning and she was reminded then that the tables on either side of the couch were wooden. The Resistance base had had very few wooden pieces; she wouldn’t have expected this First Order base to have any at all. It was too cozy, she remembered thinking, too familiar to be in a base such as this and in a room belonging to a monster.

                She inhaled, slowly coming back to herself, and the intake dragged smoke in with it. She immediately began to cough, a hand flying to her mouth to stifle the gesture even as the sound was lost under the shriek of the alarms.

                _The room is on fire._

                Now wide-awake, Rey spun around and dashed for the console by the doors to the knight’s rooms, reaching for the controls. Blinking at the screen through tears, she jabbed at the commands for the exhausts, to vent the suite of smoke.

                The screen indicated an error, flashing red.

                _No Authorization._

                Not possible. All rooms and living spaces had the commands available at all times. It was a safety precaution unless the commands were overridden and locked.

                Which could very well be the case for her, she realized in rising horror.

                Staring in disbelief, she punched at the screen again, demanding ventilation, only to be given the same response.

                _No Authorization._

                Rethinking, she went for the sprinklers. Rudimentary, but it would be enough just to douse the flames. With those out, she would have more time to figure a way out of the room, perhaps a chance to override the consoles if they had indeed been locked, and begin to plan her escape off the base. If nothing else, Kylo Ren would return to find his room destroyed and that would only be one inconvenience in a series that she would rain down on him.

                She punched at the selections and waited.

                _No Authorization._

                “No!” With a shout, she raised her fist and slammed the side of it on the wall beside the console. _“No!”_

                Behind her, the flames reached higher, the couch now fully consumed. Sneaking a quick look, she raised her eyes to the bedroom where the light flickering within was just as bright and ominous. Spinning back to the console, she jabbed at the same commands futilely before forcing herself to stop and think.

                _Think, think, think. Breathe-_

                The blaring alarm was beginning to give her a headache and she wondered dimly why the vents hadn’t already been bypassed by personnel to function. Stopping to just breathe, she inhaled deeply and promptly choked on the smoke that was rising in the room. Coughing harshly, she bent over, heaving into her hand before straightening once more in a panic. She blinked at the console as her eyes began to tear, the smoke stinging them, and then she looked toward the doors.

                _Focus. Focus. Forget the controls. Forget the controls. Just open the doors. Use the Force and-_

                But she could barely _see_. With tears streaming down her face, she couldn’t see past the blur, through the smoke that had now fully filled the room. She couldn’t focus even as she screamed at herself to do it, and she bowed her head and closed her eyes to save them from the smoke. Scrambling, she dragged the collar of her top to cover her mouth and inhaled the scant air through it, urging her pulse to calm.

                _Calm down. Calm down-_

                A cough rose and she felt as if she was vomiting her lungs through her mouth as she succumbed to it. Blindly, she rested her palm on the wall as her legs weakened, allowed her hand to lead her to her knees as she attempted to picture the doors in her head, the strength it would take to force them apart.

                The doors slid open, venting some of the smoke with the mere breach.

                For a second she thought she had somehow accomplished the task though there was no exhilaration to follow. Rey’s eyes snapped open, her lips parting under her top and she mindlessly reached out toward Kylo Ren as he appeared in the doorway, dark helmet reflecting the flames in the center of the room. He merely tilted his head from the burning couch to the brilliant red light in his bedroom, scanning his quarters silently. Then he leaned into the room and punched at the console, setting off a chain of commands that recognized his authorization.

                The ventilation kicked in overhead through the ducts, smoke immediately dragging to the vents and vanishing through the partitions.

                Stooping toward Rey, he wound an arm under hers and around her waist, latching on before hauling her up easily against his side and lifting her out over the threshold of his quarters into the cool, sterile corridor.

                Rey dug her fingers into his heavily clothed shoulder, tightening her grip on him for dear life and burying her face against his neck and the hard edge of his helmet as she coughed once more. The air outside in the metal corridor was clear, perfect, though it continued to maintain that same antiseptic scent to it, and his arm was hard and comforting along her waist and back as she settled against him with a sigh.

                How strange that she could be dragged back to him so easily, she realized futilely.

                Curled over her, Kylo Ren turned his head toward his suite once more and lifted a hand, fingers clawing.

                For a moment nothing seemed to happen. Then, as he closed his hand into a fist, the flames began to dwindle, lessening until they became mere glowing embers in the couch. As Rey turned her head along his shoulder to look, she watched the cinders burn out, the flames in the bedroom also falling away into darkness until the only light in the room came from the corridor they crouched in and the moonlight drifting in through his windows.

                Still bent, the knight reached past her toward the doorway in one furious gesture, stabbing at the console screen blindly.

                The console beeped and a matter of moments later, droids came from small hidden slats in the walls, speeding out and rolling toward them where they huddled.

                _“How may I be of service?”_ one asked, another following with the same line of questioning.

                A growl rose deep in Ren’s chest, one that Rey was in prime position to hear. “Room AG-204-X. Status Report,” he barked at the first small droid to reach his side, his mechanized voice coming out as growl.

                _“Status: Functional. Detecting the presence of carbon monoxide, methane, benzene-“_ came the small but chirpy response.

                “What was the status approximately five minutes ago,” the knight demanded over its answer.

                The droid beeped and whirred. _“Status as of 19:48:31: Functional. Maintain override command.”_

                Silence fell in the hallway as the blaring alarms abruptly died away. Rey dropped her head back onto the knight’s shoulder wearily at the sudden and wonderful silence, her throat burning and scratchy from the smoke still. She felt Ren’s grasp tighten around her the slightest bit but then his arm hardened along with the rest of his body and she frowned faintly.

                “Which override command?” he asked slowly, coldly.

                _“Override Command ZT5816546: Maintain position._ _Designation: Hux, Armitage. General.”_

                The knight’s head lowered slightly and he exhaled mechanically through the helmet. “Quarantine the room and clear it out. Work order to repair the fire damage and replace all damaged furniture and equipment. On my authorization. No override.”

                The droid beeped once more. _“Confirmed.”_

                And with no further response, the droid rolled into the room, followed by the others that had come from the latches in the walls.

                Rey sighed as the knight seemed to turn his attention to her. “ _I_ did this,” she whispered to him, coughing as the words scratched up her throat. “There is no one else to blame here. _I_ did this to you.”

                He didn’t respond to that. Tightening his arm around her back, he merely stood to his feet, dragging her with him.

                Her legs gave under her as she attempted to force them to hold her weight, as she dug her fingers into his shoulders and chest. “Can you walk?” he asked her monotonously through his helmet, his familiar voice modified, his words low and quiet in the silence of the corridor. She felt in that moment that if he hadn’t had his helm, he would have asked it of her gently and she would have felt his breath and his heat, all of those things that she needed then.

                She nodded nonetheless, another bout of coughing stealing her vocal response.

                Turning and carefully leading her, he murmured, “I’m putting you back in your cell. We can discuss this later.” And he began to lead her down the corridor toward the lift slowly, cautiously carrying the bulk of her weight as he escorted her to the lift and then to the cell levels.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Nineteen: **

She felt his desire in the air, in the aura surrounding him as he held himself rigid, as he allowed himself to merely run his hands over her. She had felt his longing before, had felt the touch of his lips to hers, had already felt him bury himself deep inside of her and craved it, had allowed him to overwhelm her and claim her wholly. This was not the same as her dreams.

Not just yet.

 

 


	20. Chapter Nineteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys kill me with the comments. Thank you so much!!
> 
> OMG I'm more than halfway done with posting this story already!! WTH?!?

Chapter Nineteen:

 

                She opened her eyes as the door to her cell slid open.

                He appeared at the doorway, helmet hiding his face away, his hood lowered along his shoulder and back. He merely looked at her, cocking his head silently as she rolled over onto her back and tilted her head along the cold slab of her prison bed to return the look.

                She wanted to speak, wanted to thank him for saving her and then curse him for damning her; question him at the very least. But she realized a moment later that he didn’t deserve her words, her mere breath. What she had somehow done to his quarters was wholly deserved even if she had almost taken herself out in the process. Instead, she slid her eyes away, weariness slipping across her face as she turned away slightly.

                There was the smallest shift of clothes, the shuffle of feet, and then the door slid closed and silence fell once more.

                But he was still here in the cell, very close. She could feel him, could _sense_ him; the haziness of his hidden thoughts, how he pulled away when she reached out tentatively, when she searched. The heat of his body even though he stood far away from her; and now, _now_ that she didn’t need heat to warm her cold body anymore.

                What had come over her in his rooms, she wondered dimly.

                “Stress. Shock. Depression,” he murmured mechanically from under that helmet.

                She had half a mind to snap back around to look at him, to blame him yet again for always, _always_ , being in her head. And she would never be able to forget, she realized halfheartedly, her brow drawing in painfully. She would never be able to look at him without feeling… _something_.

                He hesitated. “It was never my intention,” he said quietly, his voice low, monotone beneath that helmet. Regretful.

                She had never heard that tone in his voice, in his words. It made her want to look at him again, to search the emotion out in his eyes. She wouldn’t find it with that blasted mask firmly in place over his face. Her lips tightened for a moment, her eyes blindly shifting over the metallic surface of the wall on her left. She could attempt aloofness, could pretend it had all meant nothing. But even his words now, she found that they hurt. They _hurt_. She exhaled in a huff through her nose, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” she inquired softly, almost rhetorically. She didn’t need his words, his response, she decided. She already had her answer. “You took advantage of me.”

                He physically recoiled from her words; she glimpsed it from the corner of her eyes, caught how he drew toward the door at his back. He didn’t respond to her and she found his silence even more maddening.

                Turning her head at last, she fixed him with a cold glare.

                He stood almost against the door, his shoulders hitched up, his entire frame rigid.

                She watched him now, curious to his reaction. “You don’t like those words, do you? What they entail? What they mean?” she questioned, feeling somehow lazy but electrified, wanting a rise from him, wanting him to hurt yet again. “But it is what you did to me. Even if-“

                “I didn’t know,” he stated quietly, his head lowering, his hands clenching into fists at his side as he spoke mechanically from beneath his helmet. “I didn’t-“

                “Even if you didn’t know,” she cut him off, finishing her earlier sentence. And she turned her head as he broke off, as he fell away into silence. She raised her eyes to run them over the metal ceiling overhead blindly, over its smooth surface as it reflected her figure hazily; a shadow of her, a blur. “I can forgive it because you didn’t know,” she whispered. “You didn’t know…what you were doing to me.” And a second later, almost numbly confused, “To us.”

                He didn’t respond to that, his breathing heavy in the silence of the room, his very presence a sun in the darkness. He burned so hot that she felt him from across her small cell. He burned with anger, with power.

                With revulsion, somehow. Revulsion deep inside.

                It soothed her that she felt it from him, that he was disturbed by himself, by the actions he hadn’t even known he had committed against her.

                He moved from the corner of her eye but she didn’t have the strength to look away from the ceiling, couldn’t make herself feel anymore. She’d felt too _much_ these last few hours, this last day. Her entire body was exhausted from all the emotions that she had put herself through, all the wringing, the frenzy; from her torture under his Supreme Leader to the red-haired General’s manhandling of her, the discovery of the Force Bond, and then her breakdown in his rooms that had set his quarters ablaze. She was just wrung _out_.

                The small hiss came and then he was lifting the helmet from his head, his dark waves falling along his angular face.

                She didn’t want to turn her head to look but a moment later she did so, her cheek slipping along the hard metal slab under her face.

                The Knight of Ren stood at the door, his helmet hanging from his hand as he lowered it at his side, his chin low. His lips tightened slightly, a bloodless line, before loosening and then he raised his dark eyes to meet her tired ones, also somehow fatigued.

                “I didn’t know,” he said to her once more, now in that painfully familiar voice, his pale face drawn and heavy. And as if unfamiliar with the words, he murmured, “Forgive me.”

                She felt herself nod slightly even as surprise swept through her. How strange to hear those words come from his mouth. “I know,” she whispered, blinking rapidly at him. “I do.” And then her eyebrows hitched up as she attempted once more, as she felt her sorrow rise deep inside in another last ditch effort, especially now that he could be in a place to understand her request, to grant it. “I just want to go home,” she said to him brokenly. “Let me go home, Ben.”

                His striking face registered her sorrow for a moment, mirrored it and returned it to her. He wanted to do as she asked, she realized dimly, and a small slice of hope came alive within as she gazed at him, as she held onto his expression, his pain reflecting her own.

                She had spoken with the General after the destruction of StarKiller base. She had questioned her softly but she had required answers, had needed to know what had happened that the General’s very own son had turned away from the light, had defected when he’d had such a dynasty to support him, to sustain him.

                He had been abandoned, Leia had explained, her heart breaking as the older woman had spoken. His parents had been much too different, much too entangled in their duties, in their _identities_ , that their son had fallen adrift in the midst of it. And the entire time Snoke had whispered in her heart’s ear, had brought pain out in her boy, had brought him to tantrums and then to chilling silences, and they had hoped he had conquered what had plagued him when he had stopped reacting outwardly altogether.

                He had obviously not won the war in the end.

                But she knew suddenly that he wanted the very thing she wanted. He wanted to go _home_. He just didn’t know where home was. He wasn’t safe anywhere, she understood as she stared at him, as she watched the emotions clash on his pinched face. He was revered here, held to a pedestal here. But he wasn’t home.

                This was not home.

                But he wouldn’t find a home with his mother anymore, not now that his father was dead by his own hand. He couldn’t even face the General now, couldn’t face anyone that would force him to take a good hard look at what he had done, what he had become. He didn’t have the strength to face his penalties, his sentences. His sins.

                And even as he began to mull her words, his pain overshadowed hers; she saw it in his face, watched it color the air around him, his aura becoming leaden.

                He couldn’t free her, couldn’t return her, she knew. He _wanted_ to. He wanted to have the strength to release her and watch her go as she left him, no matter how much it would tear him apart. But he _needed_ her and, for some reason, he needed her _here_. And she wondered then if it was for selfish reasons, if he wanted her for himself, needed her for what he desired or because of something more, something she did not yet understand.

                And he did desire her, she saw. He desired her power as a Force Sensitive, was almost envious of her that she could be so strong at such a novice level. That she could bring him to his knees, could dismantle him and ruin him, untrained. He desired her will for his own to help him control his person when it became necessary, to help him rein in his very emotions and the rise of his drive when his natural impulses would urge him to destruction. He needed her to temper him, to pull him back from the edge that he found himself lunging wildly toward constantly.

                She felt tears threaten to rise as she saw that he also desired her physically. Her chest burned with desperation, her vision blurring, she saw that he wanted her, body and soul. He wanted to reach out to her even then, to touch her, to run his fingers over her skin and to caress her; to comfort her with his body even if he couldn’t do it any other way. But he had learned his lesson from all of their dreams and now he stood away, stiffly.

                She closed her eyes, her tears running free as she realized that she wanted the same as him, though. She wanted the touch of his hand, the strength in his grasp, the delicate brush of his mouth. She wanted it and she wanted him, but she didn’t want to be held anymore, didn’t want to be imprisoned to feel him.

                _I just want you._

                His lips parted, his chest lifting as he inhaled raggedly, as his dark but bright eyes left hers to trail slowly down her body. He did not trap her, did not keep her bodily confined, but she felt then that he held her captive with his stare. The mere touch of it made her come alive, her previous fatigue forgotten as she felt herself react to the caress of his gaze alone.

                She slowly turned to face him, her body lifting from the stiff slab to sit up, her legs falling over the edge to the hard floor for support.

                He merely watched her, somehow seemingly battered in the sterile coldness of her cell. The scar on his face was prominent in the harsh light overhead, the slender line streaking across his forehead and cheek.

                She had put that scar there. She had slashed Luke’s lightsaber across his nephew’s tender skin and marked him forever onward. She trailed her eyes over the scar and then brought her gaze back to meet his in time to see him register what she had just done, to draw back like a child that had been reprimanded. But the scar only made him stronger to her, made her appreciate him for what he was; a survivor, a warrior.

                A knight.

                His eyes darted back to meet hers once more as if he had heard her words but she doubted then that he had. She stared at him, her fingers gripping the edge of the metal slab under her, clutching it for all she was worth.

                His gaze dropped to her hands before rising to meet her eyes again. And as she sat silently, he moved forward, darting toward her in one fluid, harsh movement and stopping just in front of her knees, his looming shadow falling over her. Her legs parted, the gesture unconscious on her part, and he shifted closer, coming up against the edge of the metal slab she rested on.

                _You came to me like this in my dreams, hovering over me, overwhelming me and swallowing me whole in your desire. Quick. Snapping. Appearing suddenly and vengefully._

                She raised her head now to meet his eyes, to allow her gaze to fall over him, his nose, his parted lips, the scar that she had given him. She wanted to touch it, to raise her head to receive his mouth, to let his hands trail all over her body and stroke her as if they had no lines between them, no ill will or feelings, nothing but the primal feel of bodies and caresses.

                He held himself still as he reached for her slowly, carefully.

                Rey felt her eyes flutter, threatening to close as she felt his warmth approach. He was a hard and solid wall of heat draped in blackness but as his hands fell on her, she felt as if she had been embraced by the gentle lapping of the sea. Her eyes finally slipped closed as she felt his hands envelop her, the slight brush of his fingers encased in leather as he trailed them down the line of her tight arms, as he slid his fingertips along the soft skin. The breath of his touch as he raised his hands from her arms to trace the long line of her neck, her head thrown back before him. She had surrendered to his touch almost as soon as he had reached for her and now, with his fingers outlining her neck, she felt as if she would never be able to take another deep breath again.

                She felt his desire in the air, in the aura surrounding him as he held himself rigid, as he allowed himself to merely run his hands over her. She had felt his longing before, had felt the touch of his lips to hers, had already felt him bury himself deep inside of her and craved it, had allowed him to overwhelm her and claim her wholly. This was not the same as her dreams.

                Not just yet.

                The thought that it could become more brought her to rigidity, her hands tightening on the slab of metal under her frame. She exhaled yearningly at feeling his mouth so close to hers, reaching achingly for the connection, for his touch.

                He did not give it to her, though he did bend toward her, his gloved hands lifting from her neck to the back of her head, fingers trailing into her loose hair and digging in to clutch her tightly, to claim her. She felt him lift her slightly toward his hard chest, his jaw pressing into her temple and then burying into her hair.

                “Come with me.”

                Her eyes fluttered open uncertainly. She wasn’t sure but she thought he had asked-

                “Come with me. Come to my quarters.”

                She frowned slightly, her clawed fingers almost cramping with the strength she used to clutch the metal slab. “What?” she asked senselessly, her chest heaving in need and then in sudden confusion. “The quarters I just set on fire..?”

                He made a small noise that lightly resembled a laugh. She didn’t think she had ever heard him laugh and it was somehow exhilarating and bizarre at the same time. “No, another,” he murmured and it took him a long moment to respond to her first question, leaving her to wonder if it was because he didn’t know how to actually answer it. “And just to sleep well for a night. A small measure of compassion, of atonement.”

                She blinked along the wave of his hair, her eyes sliding shut as she inhaled his scent. The scent of leather, of the mild smell of his tattered cloak. The scent of slight sweat, of woods. Of scattered darkness and loneliness.

                He smelled as perfect as he had in her dreams and the thought caused her to tighten in need, to ache for him; for him and for his hands, for the stroke of his hips against hers and the demand of his mouth.

                “You smell like you did in my dreams,” she whispered in agony, leaning into him against her will.

                His hands instinctively released her hair to wind around her, fingers slipping low to encircle her shoulders as he dragged her against his chest tightly.

                She found herself pressed to the draping material of his hooded cloak, the rough weave of the tunic beneath. Her hands released the metal slab under her body and streaked up to clutch at his waist. He was trim and hard, unyielding under her fingers as she felt him.

                Just as she had dreamt him.

                “Come with me.”

                She swallowed her heart down, grimaced as she steeled herself. “I will.”

                He hesitated as if he hadn’t heard her correctly, as if he was uncertain. And when he asked it of her again, the voice came to her deep inside, in her head and thrumming through her veins as if his low tone ran through her entire body instead of blood.

                _Come with me._

                She nodded into his embrace, her hands clutching him as if there was no other way to salvage herself. “Yes,” she responded. “I will go with you. But-”

                He immediately shushed her, his thoughts humming to soothe her and her fears.

                _Just for the night. Just for the night._

                She exhaled, burrowing deeply into him. This was the closest she would get to home even if it was in the arms of her enemy, the arms of a man that had once made her feel more than revered, almost a goddess, when he had touched her. He would not hurt her tonight, or any night.

                Hopefully never again.

                “Just for the night,” she whispered faintly. And she exhaled thankfully as his hand lifted and trailed through her hair softly.

                _Just for the night._

 

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Twenty: **

Now, moving mindlessly, she dropped her legs over the side of the couch and rose to her feet, already moving.

His bedroom doorway stood open, beckoning.

               

               

 


	21. Chapter Twenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HNNNNNNNNNNNNG SMUT! I swear, I wrote so much smut in this fic...
> 
> I also recommend listening to Green or Blue's In Love With a Liar for this chapter. It was immediately a favorite song when I heard it and I thought it fit so well at the beginning of this chapter. Enjoy!

Chapter Twenty:

 

                She had been here once before, what felt like years when it had only really been…weeks? Not even months. She had dreamt of him, had come apart under his fingers and his mouth, and now she snapped awake at having the same dream return to her in this place that she dared not call home. She rose instantly along the couch with a gasp, her back protesting that she would abuse it quite so suddenly after rousing it from sleep.

                She found that she ached between her thighs. She had been so close in her dream, as close as he had been. She had sensed the shivers rising throughout his body, bringing him to a delicious rigidity as she had writhed above him. Even now she tingled desperately, her legs drawing together instinctively to cease the tremors between her thighs. The mere motion somehow prolonged the ache and as she panted she heard a sound from his bedroom. The shifting of a long body, the heavy breaths.

                The need in his thoughts in the night.

                When she had come with him to this new suite, she had marveled at how closely it resembled his original quarters. Probably the same structure in this wing when the base had been created. She had avoided looking at the couch for all she had seen was the previous one going up in flames when she had cast the burning sheet on it. But once in these quarters, even as she had felt his desire, he had instead asked her to sleep separately from him. She had requested his couch immediately knowing he had been ready to offer her his bed, but she hadn’t been ready to feel that for him, to feel so close to him. She hadn’t wanted to lay down in something that would soon smell of him even though it would have been the first night after burning his previous quarters down. And she hadn’t wanted to leave her own scent anywhere in these rooms. This was not her home; she had no reason to claim anything here and he was still her captor. He was not her friend no matter how hard she searched for that in him in this cold place.

                He had instead provided her with his refresher to bathe and a black slip to sleep in, murmuring that it was all he had for her if she had wanted to change into something more comfortable. She had taken the slip from him tentatively, feeling its silkiness between her fingers and wondering if she would be secure enough to change into it after her shower with him in the other room, with so much of her body visible in it. In the end she had decided that he was not the sort to harm her in the middle of the night so she had changed into the slip after bathing and had accepted a sheet from him for the night, her eyes searching his face as he had shifted his gaze away from her form in the slip. And then he had turned to return to his bedroom and she had been left alone in the darkness of his main room to sleep.

                Now, moving mindlessly, she dropped her legs over the side of the couch and rose to her feet, already moving.

                His bedroom doorway stood open, beckoning.

                She came to the door slowly, hesitantly, pausing in the doorway, her hand lifting to the wall as she came to hover.

                He was awake. He had awoken as she had; suddenly, desperately. Desiring. And this reoccurrence of the dream had not felt as the first one had. He had not initiated it, had not gone seeking her out as he had done previously. This time, this shared dream was her fault and she understood only then how one could easily misunderstand or think that it had been nothing more than night visions. This time _she_ had instigated it and it made her finally realize how easily they fled to each other. How strong their bond truly was that it could draw them together across the galaxy. Across the span of a suite.

                As she lingered in the doorway, she lifted her eyes to him.

                He sat on the very edge of his bed, nude from the waist up, his elbows on his thighs, his head in his hands. As if sensing her near, his own eyes slipped closed tightly, his lips thinning to a line as he tilted his head away.

                “You’re punishing me,” he murmured in the silence, his tone weary, pained. “Because I did this to you.”

                She quickly shook her head at him wordlessly but he hadn’t raised his eyes to look at her. “No,” she said softly. “I would never do that. I am not that kind of person-”

                He sighed, shaking his own head. “You are exactly that kind of person if pushed to it. We all are.”

                She recoiled slightly at the venom in his words, in his tone. Maybe they were, then. She looked back at the couch, taking a step toward it before stopping once more, her inner voice whispering deep inside of her. She still half-trembled, her pelvis tight, her body tingling. Bowing her head, she spoke inside of herself, knowing somehow that he would hear her.

                _We both want it. Need it._

                Her words came, not so much urgently as yearningly, as she turned her head to look at him; the devil on his shoulder urging him on for his closed eyes squeezed further, a grimace contorting his features.

                _Yes,_ came his voice in reluctant agreement.

                Turning back, she took another step, now entering his bedroom, and she waited for him to lift his head to her.

               When he finally did, he stared at her as if he had never seen her before, as if she were the angel to that devil whispering sensuously in his ear. Closing his eyes once more, he merely nodded, his arms falling into his lap as he straightened in defeat.

                And she went to him.

 

                As he straightened, his eyes came open to look at her.

                She was beautiful in the darkness, as beautiful as he knew her to be in the light, as beautiful as she had been that night during the festivities in the Resistance base when he had seen her through the eyes of the traitorous admiral’s son. She had worn a gown reminiscent of one that his grandmother had worn once on Naboo when she had fallen for his grandfather, and Rey had shown with Light from deep inside, with the glow of the moon as if she had hidden it away within.

                She tilted her head at him from the doorway, her soft dark hair falling in waves around her neck as she stood in the light of the moons.

                He wanted to bury his face into that arch, wanted to breathe her in and settle deeply inside of her. Let her light wash over him and warm his cold bones.

                He was so _tired_.

                She came toward him, silent as a wraith, and as she neared he lifted his head, his eyes following hers as she slowed to pause before him. The blackness of the slip was wrong on her, he felt then, gaze sliding across the curves of her shoulders, the slight edge along the material where her breasts rounded the satin. He should have found something lighter, paler, for her to change into instead of that. White? No, not white. She was light but she was not pure. There was an anger to her, a vengeance that ran through her being as evidenced by the destruction of his previous quarters.

                Gray. Gray would suit her beautifully. He would request slips in that shade for her in the morning.

                She took another step and came to hover between his bent knees, much too close for him but perfect just the same. His arms shifted slowly as she hesitated, his hands lifting to settle on her hips carefully as he took a deep breath.

                She smelled of his soap still from her shower earlier, of the clean sheets he had given her. Of him. He didn’t know whether he was thankful for it or not, that she would not smell of herself for he found that he had come to appreciate her natural scent. His eyes grazed the roundness of her breasts as he lowered his head, the darkness of her tanned skinned in his room, the curve of her hips beneath the slip as his fingers clenched reflexively on them and jarred her in the process.

                She sighed softly under his fingers and then her arms lifted, her hands coming to rest on his scarred shoulders before sliding to cup his face between her palms.

                She was going to be the death of him here in the darkness of his room, where no one could see and no one would ever care. His eyes slid closed, aware of the heat of her fingers on his face as she cradled it between her hands.

                When was the last time someone had held him like this? Had anyone _ever_ held him this way?

                There were flashes of a pale face overhead, a woman hovering the way this one did here but it was not Rey. His mother. His mother’s hands cupping his face and lifting it up as she looked down at him, sadness in her eyes. She had held him like this once. No. More than once; when he had been a mere boy and then again just before he had left to train with his uncle Luke. Although at that time, he had already been her height, taller. But still that soft touch, the gentle curve of her palms as she had tilted his head down to meet her eyes. She had seen his father in him that day; he had lifted her thoughts from her smoothly, drawing a thread from the spool and marveling at it.

                She had loved him once.

                Rey nudged his head now and he allowed her to move him, to tilt his head up, lost in those memories that beat and floated like fairy wings. So close but distant, fluttering away when he reached for them as if they had never existed.

                But Rey here, now and in his room, she was not his mother and she did not share the love that Leia had once had for him. This woman here needed only one thing, her hands soft but trembling minutely. In that moment she needed a kiss, a release, something to cement what was between them because he had dragged her into something different and alien, something painful, and she was alone and afraid so far from home.

                But she reached for something that was not there.

                He didn’t want it. Right then, he didn’t want the intimacy of a kiss, of such a grand gesture, did not want to feel so close to her even as he knew that he would be bridging the gap between them so much more in the night. His fingers tightened on her hips, bringing her to pause as she leaned, and then he lifted a hand away from the soft curve of her, raising fingers to one of the slender straps of the black slip.

                Rey immediately straightened and stiffened as his hand slipped around her shoulder, a finger sliding deftly under the slim strap. But as she inhaled deeply, she didn’t move to stop him.

                She had struck him there with his uncle’s lightsaber. The thought caused him to pause, slowed his fingers as they traced his scar along her unblemished skin. She had felt his pain in the months that he had been unconscious. He remembered it, saw it now as if in a dream; Rey stretched out beside a tank of bacta embedded in the smooth floor of the Resistance base, her hand playing along the lip of the tank as she watched the traitor heal within. The sudden streak of pain that had flashed across her shoulder and jaw when he had unwittingly reached for her through his darkness and forced a connection again. The wince on her face and the soundless cry she had loosed when he had wordlessly begged her to take the pain from him, just for a little while. Just a little while so that he could sleep and dream of her in peace before taking it from her once more, for he had never wanted to hurt her.

                He would never have wished it on her.

                Blinking up at her with hooded eyes, he tangled his finger along the strap and carefully slid it off her shoulder and down her arm. The slip had been too big on her to begin with and as he brought the strap down, it dragged the slip low. She was exposed to him a moment later as the soft material fell down her arm and off her breast.

                She was _beautiful_. Half nude in the night, in his sleeping quarters, she was beautiful and exquisite beneath his fingers. His lips parted as his fingers released the strap of her slip and shifted under her arm to slide in across her torso. Then his palm was on her breast and she was so soft under his hand, full and tender, and he could not comprehend how she could exist as she did, how she could _be_. His fingers grazed the skin of her chest as his palm cupped her breast and she reacted, her shoulders pulsing as she bent back down to him.

                His palm slid again, trailing and pushing her breast up as his hand closed around it. And then, as she trailed her fingers around the back of his head to thread through his hair, he merely leaned and rested his forehead against the softness of her breast.

                He was so tired and he found that he ached for her, that he wanted her touch, her body, her _light_. Forgiveness. Right then he would have given his _soul_ for forgiveness; for his father to forgive the sins he had committed in the name of the Dark Side; that shaky, oft-times seductive pull that spoke to him and his basest of urges.

                He shook under her hands momentarily, his body straining. She reacted, wrapping her hands and then her arms around his shoulders.

                “All we can ever hope for is forgiveness,” she whispered, her breath warm along the top of his head, her curled arms holding him tightly.

                 He blinked, his eyes coming open along her soft skin, lashes fluttering.

                Of course she had heard him. He hadn’t even thought to shield his thoughts from her. He was surprised momentarily that he had allowed himself to roam so freely. The next moment, he slammed that wall down, his inner voice becoming his once more even as she started in his embrace.

                She would not best him.

                “Wait-“ she called quietly, desperation tingeing her words.

                No. Not tonight. Not ever. Not if he could help it.

                Lifting his head, he met her eyes only for a moment before he turned his attention to her breast. She had come to him for this. She had needed her desire sated and he was going to do it for her, for himself, in the hopes that it would finally banish her from his constant thoughts, diminish her very light from reaching him in his dark corner.

                A startled moan left her lips as he closed his mouth around her nipple, his hands sliding to take hold of her hips to yank them against his chest. She was soft against his tongue as he ran it over her skin, feral in his arms as she dug her nails into his hair and writhed.

                This is what he wanted of her, what he needed from her when he was to start training her, when they locked in combat, in the past and the soon-to-be future if he had his way. He wanted this strength, this wildness. This ferocity as he understood that she could just as soon kill him as straddle him and take him deep within herself in white-hot desire.

                She made a low keening sound as he ran his tongue over her, as he closed his mouth to suck at her breast. She was falling apart in his arms, quivering, and he wanted to see it, wanted to see her bare herself to him until he saw deep down to her true self.

                She was trying to form words, was pulling at his hair desperately, small twinges of pain and ecstasy, when he lowered his hands from her hips to the hem of her slip. Leaving her breast, the tip of his tongue flicking after temptingly, he lifted his eyes to her once more as his fingers slid under the hem of the slip to the bare skin of her thighs beneath.  

                Her eyes came open unwillingly, her stare unfocused as she straightened her head to look down at him. He met her gaze straight, wondering in the moment what she thought she read in his stare. Maybe she only saw the monster that had killed his father, had hurt her friend and had tried to hurt her in the snowy woods. And maybe there was even more darkness to her than he had thought as her eyes dilated upon seeing him, desire curling through her, hot as fire. She was probably also regretting her decision to come to his room tonight even though they had both needed release.

                Awareness returned to her eyes as he slid his hands up the long lines of her thighs to the curve of her hip. She was very much nude under the slip and as he trailed his fingers along her hips to her rear, he began to rise from the bed. A moment later, his hands opened, clenching down on her thighs and lifting her. Her eyes widened slightly as he dragged her up against his chest, as he wrapped her legs around his waist to anchor along his frame.

                He saw the craving in her eyes plain as day now, watched her try to cover it up as she struggled to compose herself upon finding herself in such a compromising position. As if he would attempt to hurt her in that moment. “Don’t hide from me,” he said to her quietly, his deep voice at home in the darkness of his new bedroom.

                She could only gaze at him, her arms locked around his shoulders, her fingers still tangled in his hair. And he would be damned if he didn’t admit that the tug of her hand in his waves, the soft trail of her fingers across his skin, set off a delicious shiver throughout his body.

                She would be his, he was almost sure of it. He just didn’t know for how long she would wish to be or how long it would take to become reality.

                Turning, he faced the edge of his bed, his palms sliding along the underside of her smooth thighs now that he was sure she was secured to him. They roved along her rear and then up under the slip that was bunched up at her waist, up along the slender soft lines of her back until he was cradling her tightly to his chest. He dragged his eyes away from hers to gauge how low the bed was from their joined grasp and he was aware that she attempted to follow his gaze as it left hers, that she leaned to try to maintain that close contact.

                It would be as intimate as a kiss and he did not want it in the moment. He had no desire for any sort of connection, for any trappings or any kind of joining. He wanted only one thing and it was a release.

                Even if it wasn’t his.

                Lifting a knee to the surface of the bed, he bent at the waist, relishing the feel of her at his mercy, dependent on him to guide her. He lowered her to the bed and when she held on still, he lifted a hand to her arms, unhooking them from his neck.

                She released him after a moment, her face betraying her awkwardness.

                If she felt uncomfortable now, he would banish that from her in a moment. This was something she had come to him for and he would not betray himself in thinking that it was something that only she wanted. He wanted to immerse himself in her, dip into her depths and allow the darkness deep down within himself to swallow him in gentle blackness knowing that her light shimmered above like the sun through the rippling, mirrored surface of the ocean.

                She could comfort him. She could keep him.

                His hands came up, taking hold of her wrists and lifting them over her head to push them down to the bed.

                She stared at him in silence, her lips parting almost fearfully. Yearningly. He couldn’t distinguish between the two in the cacophony of sounds and words in her head. She did not trust him though she did want him in the moment. He found that he could not fault her. He didn’t trust her either but in the darkness, in the late hours of the night, things could be forgiven and overlooked, momentarily forgotten.

                She lifted her head toward him, her arms pinioned overhead to the bed.

                He turned from her questing mouth, frowning deeply. “Don’t,” he ordered shortly.

                She dropped back down to the bed silently, her face registering sorrow.

                He didn’t want to explain anything then. It was a shame that she felt as she did, that she was still attempting to drag him out of his darkness when his own father hadn’t been able to do so even in death. But he was not about to shoulder that burden that she carried, that drive to change him. He wanted nothing to do with it. He only wanted-

                He took hold of her wrists with one hand, leaving them still clamped under his strong grip. The other slipped low, trailing down over her breasts tantalizingly, feeling the softness of the slip and her slender body beneath, sliding lower to the hem of the slip. She was all leg, shapely and tanned in the moonlight, still bent and hovering at the sides of his hips. He took hold of one of her knees and pushed her leg flat to the side, opening her to him.

                Her breathing quickened, her wrists unconsciously shifting to rise.

                He pushed them down with some force, trapping her to the bed, and met her eyes.

                _You don’t need to be afraid of me._

                She knew it but it took a moment for her to relax under him. Then, as his fingers trailed in along her thigh, her eyes slid closed, her chest rising with breath.

                He knew how he would find her and as his fingers trailed into her center she was exactly as he had dreamed her, as he had remembered her to be. The pads of his fingers slid in her wetness and the mere touch brought her to arch off the bed, her bent knee curling in almost painfully against his ribs.

                He exhaled softly as she writhed, his eyes dropping to his hand as he delved into her folds, as his fingers came away glistening. She had already been wet when she had come to him but now, as he stroked her gently, his fingers glided over her slickly, his lips parting as he cast a glance upward to gauge her reaction.

                She was lost in the moment, her mouth curved in a sigh, her hips pushing down into the bed even as she arched into the air. Her breasts rounded the slip, one still bared, and as the moonlight trailed in, he watched the curve of them as she breathed. She was beautiful, so much so that she pulled at his heart.

                And here he had long thought the organ dead.

                He fell into a rhythm with his fingers, slipping deep, sliding one inside of her and then trailing back up to run over her. She was tight, he found himself thinking, dark eyes trailing over her body as it curved in response to his touch, her hips pulsing as he stroked her. There was the chance that she was untouched by another, that she had spoken the truth that last night when he had come to claim her in their shared dream, before he had put his plan into effect and given himself up to the Resistance to be their prisoner. His gaze dropped back down to where he caressed her, how damply his fingers shone in the moonlight. He wanted to taste her, to slip inside of her tightness and settle, wanted to be consumed by her body even as she moaned and called, as she tightened around him. He wanted to find release inside of her.

                _Salvation_ inside of her.

               The thought caused him to tighten his mouth into a thin line in something akin to anger. As he trailed his fingers over her, he leaned down, his tongue finding her breast and flicking at the nipple, bringing it to a peak. She twisted at the sensation, her eyes shut tightly, her body pulsing at his mercy, at his touch. The mere gesture was enough to bring her to shift desperately, futilely, and he pulled back simply to watch her. She was almost wild, her torso curving like a wave, her head pushing back into the surface of the bed, wrists pulling at his hand even as she bowed under his fingers.

                He slid down in her wetness and then slipped a finger in, another, thrusting into her slickness and curling up inside.

                A low moan left her lips and she pulled again at her wrists, whimpering when he tightened his grip on her. “I-”

                He bent low, lapping at her breast once more, thrusting his fingers into her deeply. She barely gave him any extra space, holding his fingers and clutching down on them as his thumb slipped over the sensitive nub above. She would be exquisitely tight if he was to replace his fingers with his hard length and he longed to do it then, to be her first. “What do you want?” he asked her softly, his breath warm along her breast as he caressed her again, sliding in her wetness.

                His touch caused her to buck off the bed, her body calling, her face twisting in an expression close to pain. “I…I want _you_. I want you-”

                He turned his head from her breast, already knowing that it would not happen tonight. That it would never happen as he did not want that connection, and that she didn’t want it either in the end, no matter what her body desired and what it whispered to her in this weak moment.

                “Please. _Please_ -“

                His mouth closed around her nipple, his tongue sliding across her breast as his fingers delved deep inside and then stroked her outside, as he used her wetness to stimulate her. He exhaled against her sensitive skin, grimacing as he felt her need rise inside of her, as her words and her thoughts became a mess in his own head. He was hard for her and he fought the need to free himself of his trousers and push into her slickness, to seat himself so deep inside of her that he couldn’t tell himself apart from her. He wanted her to own him, physically and mentally, to allow her to shed her light over him and help him sleep peacefully for once. His mouth fell open along her breast, tongue slipping across the swell of her as his fingers thrust into her angrily, irate that he couldn’t have what he needed as well.

                She arched with a hard shout, her voice trailing into despair as he palmed her mound, as he rubbed against her. Her legs quivered, her knee pushing into his side and he released her wrists to lower his hand to that knee, to yank it tightly to his ribs as he thrust his fingers into her.

                Her freed arms fell and she wrapped a hand around the back of his neck tightly, the other falling to clasp the hand that held her knee to his side. Her breaths came rapidly, urgently, as she pushed against his fingers inside of her, as she pulsed her hips to the rhythm of his hand. Her pants turned into whimpers and then to soft cries as she rode his hand, as she allowed her body to react to him.

                She was close. He could feel it from her body as she clenched around his fingers, as she curved her hips to his touch. And he could hear it in her thoughts, her incoherent words and her insensible murmurs, the low groans and the hitched gasps, the cries. She was going to have him come in his trousers at this rate and he couldn’t fault her for he felt what she felt; the highs and lows, the slip of his fingers and the caress of his tongue along the underside of her breast. Her breath hitched as did his, his chest rising into her torso, pushing in as he curled his tongue around her nipple, as his fingers surged deep and twisted up inside of her, searching for that tender spot that would have her come apart on his hand.

                Her fingers spread on his neck, digging into his hair, curling and yanking as she panted. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had held him in lust as she did and it unnerved him, unfocused him and drove him out of his tight grip on control. His eyes slid shut tightly, his cheek turning into her breast as her moans became louder, as her voice rose in the stillness of his bedroom.

                Her hand twisted in the hair at the nape of his neck, tightening, and he realized she was pulling him upward. He went with a grimace, his head turning toward hers as his fingers worked, as he felt her familiar rhythm against his hand. And then she took hold of his face with trembling fingers, her body moving without her, and he found her mouth against his ear, catching her scent on the air around them.

                Someone to clutch as their world ended in darkness and passion.

                Her cry rang through his bedroom as she peaked, her body clenching around his fingers, her hips pushing into his hand and undulating. His breath hitched against her skin as his fingers became drenched in her wetness, as she pulled him so tightly against her that he thought she would break him.

                And for a long moment she merely held him, her entire form trembling even as she became stiff, as she curled into him helplessly, pressing her face into his neck and shoulder. Then her voice dwindled into heavy pants, into soft whimpers as she quivered around his hand, as she trembled against him uncontrollably.

                He was arrogant of that suddenly; her weakness under his fingers, the feel of her body falling apart beneath him. He had done that to her, had driven her to insensibility and caused her to break in her release. _He_ had done that to her.

                Her moans lessened as he trailed his fingers over her, as he helped her ride her orgasm out until she was left breathing heavily in his ear, her grip on him still tight and painful. As she recovered slowly, he turned his face to her breast, flicking his tongue at her nipple almost distractedly.

                She moaned, a low, drawn out sigh, her hips pushing against his hand in a waving cadence until she was weak and then she settled shakily on his bed, spent at last.

                He stood still, relishing her breath against his ear, the slickness under his hand and the way she whimpered as he carefully extracted his fingers from her tight sheath. He raised that hand to the bed at her side, propping his torso up even though she kept him trapped against her chest.

                A moment later she shifted and one of her hands slipped down, trailing along the hard line of his shoulder and arm before sliding between their bodies and moving downward.

                He knew where she was heading before she reached him. Just as she touched his beltline, his hand streaked out and took hold of her wrist to stop her. Instantly angry, he shoved her hand to her side and pinned it to the bed.

                The hand in his hair froze, her entire body stiffening.

                “Don’t,” he ordered sharply.

                She hesitated for a long moment, her breast lifting against his chest as she breathed. Then her voice came softly, uncertainly. “But…you want it, too. I-I can feel it. You need this as much as I did and I-”

                He streaked away from her then, lifting from her so suddenly that he left her bereft of warmth. Straightening to his knees on the bed, he looked down at her.

                She was in an unruly state; her hair strewn across the bed’s surface in a wave of pale darkness, her lips parted and her cheeks still red with a flush of blood. He registered her slip dragged off her breast and bunched up around her waist, her legs parted and bent, and the very center of her wet and glistening in the moonlight.

                She was painfully stunning even looking so disheveled. She looked like a woman that had been well satisfied even if her alarmed expression clashed with the image. His body called for her, for his own release and he winced slightly as he felt the impulses rising within. He wanted to put his mouth to her then, to run his tongue across her and to savor her, to swallow her wetness and bring her to call out in the darkness of his room once more. He wanted to let her finish the job, to allow her fingers to pull him loose from his pants and to guide him into her center, to push herself onto him and take him deep. He wanted to let her do things to him that he had never allowed anyone else to do to him and he wanted to be lost within her knowing that he might never return or recover.

                She had the power to break him and she didn’t even know it.

                Instead, he allowed his anger to manifest, to take him over, and he slid away from her and rose to his feet at the side of the bed. It was always what he would revert to, he realized almost calmly, comfortingly. Anger and pain, darkness. It was what he knew.

                Rey immediately sat up, reaching for him. “Wait,” she called to him.

                “Don’t tell me what I want,” he snarled at her, batting her hand aside. “What I _need_. You don’t know what I need.”

                “But you _said_ as much-” she said tremulously, her hazel eyes wide, her long legs curling in under her slender frame.

                And he hated her in that moment. Hated that she could read his mind, could lift his thoughts from him as easily as she could make him want her. He hadn’t survived and thrived within the First Order for years by being weak, and that was what she did to him; she weakened him, crushed him, manipulated him with the mere curve of her hips.

                “You think reading me is enough to determine what I want, what I need,” he hissed at her and his hands curled into fists at his sides. “Perhaps you should consider the words that come out of my _mouth_.”

                Rey recoiled at his tone, her hand drawing in to her chest as she stared at him. But she didn’t have a moment to consider his words before he reached out and took hold of that wrist, snatching it in a tight grip. A small sound left her mouth as he suddenly yanked her forward and then she was dragged off the bed and onto her two very shaky legs.

                “Get out,” he growled at her and he shoved her away, pushing her toward the bedroom doorway.

                She stumbled and spun to look at him in disbelief, her lips parting. But she didn’t move, her slip still hanging from her shoulder and off a breast, her tanned skin somehow pale. “But-”

                He took her in once more, turning away a second later to avoid the mere sight of her. He did not want to be dragged into her, into her scent, her eyes, her very light. Not then. Not yet. “You know the way to your bed,” he said to her over his shoulder, his tone curt.

                She still didn’t move though she shifted slightly and when he looked again she had lifted the strap of her slip back up her arm, covering herself fully.

                “Get out!” he shouted, spinning and rearing up on her in anger.

                With another start, she blinked and then turned her face away, her arms wrapping around herself as she fled his room.

                He took a step after her but merely waved his arm, forcing the door to slide shut behind her and encasing him in darkness and silence.

                And in that moment he was safe once more even if left wanting.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Twenty-One: **

And she found that she relished that look on his face. Surrender. She rarely saw it on him; once in the wild snowy woods of StarKiller base when she had rounded on his injured form wielding Luke’s lightsaber and then here, now, beneath her. Giving himself up to her to allow her to do whatever it was that she wanted with him. She tilted her head at him, frowning faintly that he lay so loose under her body. Between her legs.

 


	22. Chapter Twenty-One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys...are fabulous. And amazing. And bring me to tears. Thank you all for the comments. I hope you guys keep enjoying the fic. Also, I may suddenly follow some of you on tumblr if I recognize you from this website. If you see DayZeeChayn following you (or even Tasogareban, but DayZee more likely), that's me, lol! My real name is Daisy and yes, that Ridley girl stole it from me because I'm older!! XD
> 
> Um. SMUT. Okay bye.

Chapter Twenty-One:

 

                She groaned under her breath as she heard him exit the refresher. She knew that he would very well yank her right off the couch and thrust her into the room after him to get ready if she decided to roll over and ask for another five minutes. Why even bother?

                Because of it, she merely sat up, tossing the covers aside and rising from the couch. He had left the light on for her in the small refresher and she blinked irritably against the brightness as she entered and shut the door behind herself. Ever since he had returned to his suite and found her unconscious halfway to the shower, he had given her access to the refresher room. She assumed he had done so not from the kindness of his heart but because he sensed that in her wildest, most fearful moments, she would discover the loopholes in his security systems, in the consoles throughout the base.

                The exact bypass code into his suite and out of it.

                Staring at herself in the mirror over the sink, she gauged the deep circles beneath her light eyes, the pinch to her mouth and brow. She had aged years in the span of a week and she found that she hated the way she looked. She cast a bitter look around the dark-tiled room, her shoulders hunching in as she returned to gaze at her reflection.

                She wanted to go home.

                But where was home anyway? Jakku? No longer. The Resistance base? Yes, more so than Jakku had ever been. Her home was with Finn and Poe, with the friends she had made since returning from Ahch-To with Luke promising that he would seek her out often. He had seemed to understand that his way of practicing, his way of mourning, was not hers, and he had refused to subject her to his life of self-imposed exile. He had run, she had understood early on. Not that she had blamed him. She had wanted to run for a small period right after she had returned from the destruction of StarKiller base, run from the never-ending scene in her head of Han Solo plummeting from the bridge after being run through with a brilliant red lightsaber.

                She had wanted to mourn. But she had become angry and had wanted vengeance instead.

                Her eyes darted to the door at her back as she turned the water on at the sink. She didn’t care if he heard her thoughts, if he even paid them any mind. She hated him and everything he believed in. She hated the way he ordered her around, the way he kept her trapped on this base, how alone she felt.

                She hated the harsh strength of his hands when he took hold of her, the tightness of his fingers on her wrists. She hated his body when he yanked her to him in anger, the hard planes of him when she collided against him. The height and breadth of him, even though he sometimes, _somehow_ , made her feel protected.

                And she hated his face, his breath along her skin when he bowed down to her and then shut himself away from her, as if she were the only one to remember their shared dreams and how he had continued to seek her out.

                As if she had been the only one to _crave_.

                A loud bang came from the door of the refresher, startling her and bringing a yelp from her lips as she whirled around.

                It had sounded like a very irritated Knight of Ren striking the side of his fist on the door to rush her.

                Perhaps he had been paying mind to her thoughts after all.

                With a short, “Humph!” she spun back around and reached for her toothbrush to aggressively begin her morning routine. But in the back of her mind, as she bent to rinse her mouth out, she felt the tiniest flame of satisfaction.

                For he had reacted to her thoughts and not to her delay in getting ready. And he had been as shaken as she’d been in her thoughts and desires.

                The mere thought brought a curl to her lips as she raised her eyes to the mirror once more; loose hair that she would not tie back today, hazel irises that were flaring back to life for the moment, a firm expression on her face.

                This time, staring at herself, she didn’t look quite as broken.

 

                The large room reminded her of a hangar bay. Rey cocked her head as she entered ahead of Kylo Ren, her light eyes sweeping the huge interior before slowing and turning to wait for him.

               The door slid shut behind his dark form and he also seemed to search the room from behind his helmet before coming to stand beside her.

                A large section of the floor was covered in a thick mat, metal walls bordering it. To the side along the wall by the doorway, resting behind a glass door in a case stood several different types of weapons. Rey’s eyes drifted over them, hesitating on an ornate staff.

                “And what are we doing today?” she asked distractedly before tossing him a dismissive look.

                “Training.”

                She turned around to stare at him in interest. “Training?” she inquired. “That’s new. What will you be training me on?”

                He turned his masked head toward her. “Patience, perhaps,” he said in a deep rasp, his voice distorted under that black metal.

                She sent him a glare at his response. “Oh, because of the two of us, _I_ would need to learn that kriffing lesson, is that right?” she tossed back.

                She couldn’t see it though she was almost certain she had felt the smallest spark of appreciation in his head. But he had already turned away from her to sweep his eyes over the room and then down to the floor. The padding covered the surface just beyond their feet to the back of the large room and he took a step onto it, gauging it with a hard push of his foot as he looked around the room.

                Rey watched him critically. She still hated everything about him but she couldn’t help but be so _aware_ of him and it irked her more than she was prepared for. He had kidnapped her, had stolen her from her home but he had yet to actually hurt her. Yes, he had left her in Snoke’s presence for his _Supreme Leader_ to rip her to shreds but he had been there to repair her, to bring her back to herself. She had moved from prisoner to…what? Unwilling roommate? He didn’t starve her, didn’t beat her.

                But he also wasn’t her friend. He had done this to her, had put her in this situation, in this predicament. Everything that was transpiring was his fault.

                “When will you explain to me what the Force bond is?” she asked him from behind, her voice ringing loudly throughout the large room.

                She had the desired effect as he stopped in mid-step abruptly but after a moment he left her question hanging between them, moving forward. She merely watched him as he took several steps across the mats and gauged their thickness with a bounce on his foot here, a knee and a hand to the surface there.

                She wasn’t done with him yet. “I didn’t ask for a teacher,” she reminded him curtly. “I still won’t take you up on that offer.”

                He rose to his feet, a tall and dark shadow. “Whether you wish for one or not, you will be trained,” he murmured and he cast one last look around the room, lifting his head and seeming to focus on the corners.

                She found herself mirroring him but if he saw something, she didn’t. Bringing her eyes back down, she watched as he turned around warily before pointing his stare in her direction.

                “This will do,” he said to her in his low distorted tone.

                She didn’t respond to his words but she did tense as he lifted his gloved hands to his head. A moment later, he had depressed the mechanism encasing his head within the helmet, the soft hiss echoing in the silence of the room.

                _Oh, no-_

                The helmet slipped off his head of dark waves and he strode toward her, stepping off the mat to lower the helm to the unpadded floor, depositing it quietly beside her.

                Rey watched him over her shoulder as he set the helmet down, as he removed his gloves as well to join the mask, and then rose to his full height at her side.

                He met her light eyes, his dark stare somehow blank. “We won’t use weapons today,” he said to her, his voice still deep but no longer distorted.

                She attempted to compose herself, fending off the way he made her stomach flip at his words, at his tone. “I didn’t even know that was an option,” she mused before clearing her throat. “Are we to hurl insults at each other then?” she asked him innocently.

                And this time she caught the slightest shadow of a smile though he was already turning from her and striding back onto the mat.

                “No, scavenger,” he tossed over his broad shoulder as he put some distance between them. “I was thinking more…hand to hand.”

                She blinked at him for a second. “Hand to hand?” she echoed, her voice becoming hard. “Are you completely mad?”

                He merely returned her glare. “Why would I be?” he asked quizzically.

                Rey huffed out a sarcastic laugh. “Because I hate you! I have so much anger _festering_ in me for you that I will quite literally tear you apart!” she stated haughtily, motioning between the two of them with a quick wave of her hand.

                And damn him, he barely looked the slightest bit bothered by her admission, a quirk of his eyebrow being his only reaction. “Then show me,” he invited, his face registering practically nothing. If he feared her or even thought she was the smallest threat, he hid it quite well.

                Rey hesitated and then turned to search the entirety of the room herself. Nothing that resembled security cameras, no one else in the room, no sensors that she could see. If she killed him, she could very well be trapped in this room indefinitely, she thought blankly.

                Her eyes caught on the glass case of weapons to the side of the room and she debated for a moment whether to reach for the staff anyway, to attempt to call it to her with the Force the way she had called Luke’s lightsaber to her.

                One more thing she worried about since being brought to this First Order base. She had been taken down with the lightsaber in her possession. Had he left it behind at the Resistance base? She highly doubted he would leave a piece of his legacy behind so easily.

                Over her shoulder, she felt Kylo Ren’s stare burning into the side of her head.

                Huffing, she turned back around to face him, her fingers drawing into fists at her sides slowly. She would have to go along with this training then but she didn’t have to like it.

                He dropped his eyes to her hands as she shifted and satisfaction curled his lips.

                The mere arrogance on his face drew her anger back to the surface and she launched herself onto the mat, racing across its uneven surface toward him. All she wanted was one sure hit; to connect a fist to his face, or a hard joint to a weak area on his tall frame.

                She saw the outcome of her attack before she even reached him. She lifted his thoughts from his head as if he had wanted her to be able to read him, to see all her faults and errors as quickly as he had registered them and to be ashamed. And as she attempted to rear back, she knew immediately where she had faltered in his estimation and reflexively braced herself as he followed through on the vision in his head, in _her_ head now.

                He bent and slipped under her reaching fist, his hand curling and clamping down on her bicep, thrusting his shoulder forcibly into hers as she collided solidly with his back. Then he was rising to his full height, hefting her up with him, her arm twisting at a painful angle as he carried it over his shoulder and chest.

                A second later she was yanked off her feet and over his shoulder, the world shifting in a blur. She was dropped roughly onto her back on the mat before him, her breath hitching from the sudden impact.

                She instinctively tried to cough, tried to draw a breath in, but the crash to the mat had stolen thought and reason from her. Instead, she winced, a groan slipping from her mouth as she rolled slightly across her back and found that body part still stinging from the fall.

                Hunched over her, his dark waves falling along his temples with not a hair out of place, the Master of the Knights of Ren merely arched a brow down at her. “I’m still waiting for you to show me,” he stated with a tilt to his lips.

                Damn that mouth. He didn’t even know what he did to her.

                In anger, she found her breath and immediately seized it, her body streaking up, and indignation pushing her to her feet.

                He recoiled from her, that same irritating shadow of a smile on his face as he waited for her to recover.

                With an angry cry, she threw herself at him, hoping her resentment would propel her enough to hurt him, to make him buckle. She was all careless limbs and brute force again though and as she collided with him, she found that she hated the slight shake of his head that he sent her way, the careless turn of his hips, the exasperated breath that he released as he hefted her up halfway through her lunge and sent her toppling to the mat once more.

                She crashed to the scratchy surface with a gasp, her vision bursting into stars momentarily as she collided roughly. _That_ one stung. She’d felt her shoulder take the brunt of her fall as she had landed on it, the sharp pain streaking through her neck and down her side in a flash of heat. Her head thumped against the mat soundly, another delightful bolt zinging through her head and causing white light to spark behind her closed eyes.

                “Ugh!”

                The growl ripped from her mouth in frustration as she attempted to tamp down on the pain flaming throughout her entire torso. Tears rose in her eyes at the sting, her limbs stiff as the waves washed over her and froze her in place.

                “You’re trying too hard,” he said above her, his voice so close and yet somehow so far.

                The ache pushed the entire world away, forcing her to hone in on the burn, on the strong ripples coursing through her body as they slid away and left here throbbing. “You need to stop talking,” she grumbled at him, her breath hissing through clenched teeth as she tempered the pain.

                “And you need to listen to my words,” he replied matter-of-factly and his tone sent a different type of red fire through her.

                Just as she was sure she would physically kill him when she could find the strength, he settled down on his rear beside her heaving body, his hand reaching out, his palm coming to rest on her ribs with a gentle grip. The touch did things to her even as she struggled, and she hated him and herself then as she searched for her next breath.

               “You need to breathe,” he said quietly, his fingers spreading widely, forcing more strength into his palm to carefully push her to the mat flat. “Stop moving and just breathe.”

                She fought him for a moment, almost heaving, before she registered his words. What would it hurt to heed him, she wondered tentatively before she finally allowed herself to fall restlessly to the mat under his palm to take a full, deep breath.

                The pain, while still present, began to slip away, falling like a cresting wave that was drawing back to the sea. She found that she could breathe easier, the sharp ache diminishing as she merely respired, as she focused inwardly to recover.

                His hand was still on her ribs.

                She tilted her head along the mat to look at him, taking her breaths a bit at a time to ease the remaining sting left behind.

                He merely watched her, though as she began to measure her breathing she realized that he matched his breaths to hers, inhaled as she did, exhaled the same count. She blinked, confused; confused by him and everything that he represented, and then by everything that he showed her, contradicting the former.

                “I don’t understand,” she whispered to him, searching his eyes, her hand coming to rest on his and then tightening almost possessively.

                His dark gaze dropped to their joined hands, indecision registering on his face. “Of course you do,” he replied distractedly though his tone was uncertain, tentative.

                Why was he like this? She stared at him, her chest aching for a different reason now. Her hand entwined with his, finding that she liked his long fingers coiled around hers as he straightened them momentarily and then allowed them to curl down to rest on her hand.

                And she saw her chance in his hesitance, his distraction. She clutched his hand tightly between her fingers, digging into his knuckles and pressing his palm to her ribs tightly as she cleared her mind of all thoughts.

                His eyes darted to hers almost instinctively as if he realized that she had thrown up mental walls to deflect him. His brow furrowed, his entire body immediately stiffening in response.

                _Fight or flight_ , she whispered to herself.

                A moment later she threw a leg over his, twisting his hand in her grip roughly, her other hand pushing to the mat and then taking hold, taking on her weight as she flung herself upward.

                She effectively shoved him onto his back, his wrist bent into the painful position that she used to her advantage to move him. And then she was on top of him, straddling him and slapping his stinging wrist to the mat beside his face.

                “Tell me again that you’re still waiting for me to show you,” she growled at him as she bent low, as she tightened her fingers around his and forced his hand down to the rough surface.

                Blinking rapidly, he could only meet her eyes up close, his lips parting, the pale line of his scar shifting with his expressions. First surprise and then, unexpectedly, surrender.

                And she found that she relished that look on his face. Surrender. She rarely saw it on him; once in the wild snowy woods of StarKiller base when she had rounded on his injured form wielding Luke’s lightsaber and then here, now, beneath her. Giving himself up to her to allow her to do whatever it was that she wanted with him. She tilted her head at him, frowning faintly that he lay so loose under her body. Between her legs.

                “I’m still waiting for you to show me,” he said then though his tone was far from the one he had taken earlier. The arrogance was gone as was the mischievous tilt to his lips, the easygoing strut. He lay under her limply, his hand submissive beneath hers as she clutched it beside his head of black waves.

                Rey stared down at him, her eyes caught to his before dropping to his full lips. And she wanted to kiss him then, steal a kiss from him so much that it caused her to tremble across all her limbs, from her shoulders down to the clawed fingers holding his hand down beside his temple.

                How did he do this to her? How did he have this effect on her-

                His hips shifted under hers, waving slightly but just enough to bring himself against her temptingly, to cause her to breathe in sharply at the contact.

                “Show me,” he whispered again, his words reaching for her, his breath lightly caressing her chin, his figure tightening under hers slightly.

                Rey found her fingers digging into his, her arm stiffening at the thrill that raced through her. If she closed her eyes she could still see him silhouetted in his bedroom above her, in the moonlight streaming in and painting him in a strangely heavenly light. She could still feel his hand trapping her wrists to his bed, his grip on her knee as he forced it aside, his fingers as he touched her and then delved into her most intimate of places. Her lips parted, her breath escaping her achingly.

                He mirrored her, his eyes searching her face, dropping to her mouth, unconsciously wetting his lips as he exhaled heavily. “Show me,” he said once more faintly, his dark gaze trained on her mouth as she moved to speak, as she shook her head slightly in confusion.

                Of course he was reading her mind, lifting her thoughts from her as easily as one lifted words from a book. And of course he could see her now as he had then, splayed out beneath him, curving in need, in desire, writhing from his hand and his mouth, his tongue.

                But he didn’t want a kiss, didn’t want such a large gesture, such a _sweet_ gesture. He wanted…he wanted-

                Rey pressed her hips down to his carefully, searching his face for a reaction.

                He gave it to her, his eyes sliding shut, a soft breath escaping his parted lips at her slight weight. His wrist shifted under her hard grip, his body moving just that little bit to meet hers. And as his hips stroked hers, as he pushed up into her pelvis, his free hand reached out, taking hold of her face, his fingers delving into her hair.

                Her breath came in a short gasp, her head caught by his grasp, feeling trapped and somehow reveling in every moment of it. His hand tightened, bringing her to curl her head into his palm almost helplessly as his fingers tangled in her hair and then held on.

                He said something beneath her, his voice low, lost in her slow moan as she met his hips again, as she realized that he was suddenly hard beneath her. She arched, her fingers wrapping tighter around his almost desperately, her body moving of its own will.

                His hand shifted under hers, pulling. Then his fingers in her hair yanked her face down to his, pressing her ear to his mouth as he pushed his hips up into hers and curled, causing her to follow his rhythm. “Let me touch you,” he groaned against her ear, his fingers opening then closing under hers, his hand stiffening in her grip.

                She wanted to say yes, wanted him to do whatever he wanted to her. Until she realized where they were, how anyone could walk in at any moment. “Not here,” she whispered, inhaling his scent, cedar and darkness, and wanting more of it, of him. “Not here-“

                He made a small sound that seemed surprisingly like a chuckle. “I meant, let go of me,” he murmured, his breath warm, his tone reverberating deep inside of him and into her as well. His mouth slid along her neck as he spoke, the tip of his tongue lapping at her skin temptingly.

                She hadn’t even realized that she still had his hand trapped in hers. He was stronger than her, had already shown mere moments ago that he would be able to overpower her. Why didn’t he just pull out of her grip and do what he wanted with her-

                “I am not a complete monster,” he whispered. “Contrary to what you would believe of me.”

                Perhaps not but she could barely focus on his words when he trailed his tongue along her neck, his hips stroking his hardness along her center.

                She exhaled yearningly but did as he asked, her fingers releasing his and immediately pushing into the mat beside his head, fingers spreading wide and digging into the rough surface beneath as he pressed himself to her again.

                His hand left her hair and darted down, his other hand meeting it at her hips before clutching her in a desperate grip, fingers digging into her soft flesh through her trousers.

                Rey forced herself up from his chest, feeling somehow disheveled but wild at the same time as she lowered herself directly onto his hips, trapping him between her thighs. She was wet, beginning to soak through her clothes where his hardness rose to meet her, and she looked down at him.

                How could it be him, she wondered almost painfully, panting as he pushed her down harder onto himself, as his fingers curled into her hips. Even fully clothed, he was striking. Intimidating. Her enemy. But the expression on his face as he rubbed against her, as he exhaled shakily, his hard frame rigid in need-

                How could it be him to make her feel all the things that she felt?

                “We can’t do this here,” she gasped, moving along his lap, wanting to be free of her clothes to feel his skin, his body, against hers, to bring him to feel what she was feeling. To let him take her over and do whatever he wanted to her, in any way he saw fit. Just _not here_. “We can’t-“

                “We can’t do this at all,” he uttered beneath her, his deep voice husky and sending shivers through her entire body.

                She didn’t want to hear that in the moment but she couldn’t shake it from her head once he’d said it. She tentatively lowered her hands to his chest for balance and he straightened for her, becoming that surface that she needed even as he moved between her legs. “Then why are we…” She shut her eyes tightly, a low moan leaving her lips as she felt that climax begin to loom, as she reached for it urgently. “Then why…why are we doing this… _oh-_ “

                He grimaced under her trembling body, his hands so tight on her that she realized once more how easily he could _hurt_ her. “Because…” he murmured and his face betrayed his sudden confusion, his sudden need. “Because you’re all I _think_ about. All I see in my head-“ He let out a low growl, pulsing his hips against hers desperately. “And I can’t-“

                Rey cut him off with a loud groan, a hand flying off his chest to grasp the wrist of one of the hands holding her hips to his.

                He responded as well, his head dropping back to the mat, dark waves curling beneath him, stark against the light surface. “I can’t…” he whispered. “I _won’t_ -“

                She was so close and she couldn’t tell in their connection whether she was feeling her own coming climax or his but either way, it was building strongly and it caused her to tremble. “Then don’t!” she cried, remembering their words from a hazy dream, from a promise that he had made to her. Shoving herself down to meet his upward thrust, she pushed him to join her as she climbed that mountain, words spilling from her lips. “Then don’t-“

                He suddenly sat up under her, throwing her off balance though his hands were there to catch her. “Don’t stop,” he whispered, his mouth now against the underside of her jaw, his breath hot on her skin. “Don’t stop. You’re so close that I can taste it-“

                She flung an arm around his shoulders, her hand tangling in his hair and latching on. “Yes,” she moaned, shifting across his lap, rubbing, stroking him roughly. “Yes-“

                He shifted, almost frantic, and his hand left her hip for a moment, pulling at the black tunic she wore, shoving the hem up along her stomach and baring a band of pale flesh to him. Then his fingers slid between her trousers and skin, jamming low and deep to stroke her and she fell apart instantaneously. Her cry cut through the air, her thighs squeezing his hips, her body trailing along his wantonly as she felt wave after wave of fire sweep through her.

                He breathed painfully beneath her, his body pumping under hers still as she climaxed until he also became rigid. A long groan left him, his shoulders stiffening as he peaked beneath her and she saw the blinding light behind her closed eyelids again, felt his release as strongly as she had felt her own. It was powerful, shattering, and she tightened her arm around him, afraid that she would fall if he didn’t hold her closely.

                He seemed of the same mind for his hands left her hips and drew away from her center to sweep up around her waist, dragging her to him forcefully. Her hand, knocked from his when he had embraced her, was left clutching at his bicep, the hard curve of his shoulder as her calls fell away into moans, desperate and helpless, and then gasps.

                His groan had lessened to hard breaths, his broad shoulders heaving beneath her as she also came back to herself.

                And yet he still held her, and she found that she didn’t want to release him just yet either. All she wanted to do was forget for a moment that she was not home, that he had stolen her away, and that she couldn’t trust him. But his arms were deceptive, too hard around her, too warm.

                Too right.

                He swallowed faintly, his throat moving, his breath slowing back to normal. Then his arms began to loosen their tight grip on her.

                Rey frowned at the beginning separation, her fingers uncurling from the grip she’d had on his dark hair though she soothed the skin there to lessen the sting she knew he felt. She felt almost lethargic, hovering in a dream-like state of laziness, and she felt how wet he had left her, how sticky they must both be.

                He made another small sound at her jaw, his chest shifting, and she realized that he had chuckled again, that he had obviously read her words from her mind.

                “Stop doing that,” she whispered in his ear idly, fingers still playing with his wavy locks.

                He didn’t respond for a moment, sighing lightly against her collar as he lowered his head along the line of her neck. “I can’t,” he admitted, his deep tone soft, and he ran a palm up her back slowly, curling along the curve of muscle that connected her arm to her side. The touch sent a shiver through her and he did it again lazily, fingers spreading, reaching for more skin, more of her. “I won’t.”

                _Then don’t._

                It was just a small battle in their war and this was a momentary truce. But just because she gave him something didn’t mean she didn’t want something in return.

                Drawing back from him slightly and bending her head, she searched the darkness of his hair and the sharp line of his cheekbone, the jagged scar she had left on his face that trailed and disappeared under the high collar of his dark clothes. Slowly, she lifted her hand from his shoulder and trailed light fingertips over the jagged tear of the scar.

                He held himself still, his body stiffening at her gesture though he did not turn away from her touch nor did he lift his eyes to hers.

                The line was uneven unlike the rest of his face, and she ran its length down to his neck beneath the collar before returning to his cheek. It was a slight crevice in his skin, long and ragged, a mark that she had put on him. Staring at it almost blindly, she felt her fingers move sideways, seeking out his mouth then. He had a full bottom lip and she found herself dragging her own lip between her teeth as she yearned for the brush of his along hers. “Why won’t you kiss me?” she asked him softly, absently.

                He remained silent for a long moment, his hands frozen on her back. Then he very carefully released her, his hands taking hold of her arms and setting her away from him.

                She went reluctantly, a frown crossing her face at his movements.

                He urged her from his lap wordlessly, forcing her to stand, and he mirrored her movements, rising to his feet as well.

                They were both disheveled and wild; clothes wrinkled, hair loose and waving from being clutched, but Rey didn’t pay that any mind. She watched Kylo Ren’s face as he avoided her gaze, as he brushed past her and moved to the edge of the mat where he had left his gloves and helmet. “We’re done for today,” he stated.

                Rey sighed. “Ben,” she said wearily, turning to follow him with her gaze. She was always so tired lately. “Answer my-“

                He spun on her, his face blackening with anger. “I have told you not to call me that,” he growled at her.

                And there he was again. Kylo Ren. Master of the Knights of Ren.

                _The Jedi Killer._

_When will I be next_ , she wondered fleetingly, her heart skipping a beat, her chest somehow aching.

                He stared at her darkly for a moment, a muscle twitching in his jaw, but he shook his head once, curtly, and she felt it was in response to the question she’d had in her head. “But don’t think for a moment that I haven’t considered it every time you’ve hurled that name at me,” he stated, his tone low and cold.

                Ah. Then he _had_ lifted the thought from her head.

                Rey barely paid his words any attention though, her hackles beyond raised at that point. She threw her arms out wide at her sides, her patience running thinly into desperation. “Then do it already!” she shouted at him. As he recoiled slightly, she continued, feeling her own anger begin to rise as well. “Just get it over with! I’m obviously never leaving this place and I’m never going to give in and become a creature like you, happily waltzing into the Dark Side. So just do it! Save us both the time and energy-“

                “It isn’t my intention to kill you,” he cut her off in irritation. He stooped and snatched up his gloves, jerking them on before picking up his helmet next. “I want to train you, to show you how to use the Force-“

                “For the Dark Side, yes! I know!” she said just as annoyed.

                “For us!” he corrected her roughly, straightening, the helmet hanging in his hand at his side and clearly forgotten. “ _Not_ for the First Order, _not_ for the Supreme Leader! For us! For _me_!”

                Rey stared at him, confusion crossing her face at his words. “For you?” she asked in a whisper.

                He waved an arm dismissively. “All this for an answer to a question?” he continued, his face pinching in frustration, the scar becoming prominent with the pull of skin.

                Rey blinked, her mouth open to speak though she stood utterly puzzled. “I-“

                “I don’t _kiss_ you,” he said to her menacingly, “because kissing is for children. They’re silly, meaningless little things that don’t belong here in this place, in this world. They do not belong between you and I, they have no place and hold no weight between us. They’re mere-“

                _“Then give me something childish and meaningless!”_ she shouted at him for she realized in that moment that she no longer wanted to be an adult, no longer wanted everything here to hold such dark, terrible consequence.

                As he broke off she dropped her head, her arms lifting to settle on her hips, her chest rising as she took in a deep, weary breath.

                All of these things that she had to do for him and he couldn’t repay her in the smallest way, the simplest gesture? And then at her thought, she mentally slapped herself.

                Why even ask such a thing of him? There were so many things that she could ask for instead; more food now that she was eating less than she had been with the Resistance, as it would be her only chance to be inherently selfish here. More freedom, freedom to wander the halls and levels of this First Order base. Privacy so that she could, for _once_ , drop her shields and mental walls, and just _breathe_.

                “You know, don’t even-” She shook her head, her lips tightening in a hard line. “Don’t even listen to me. I don’t need that from you. I don’t need… _anything_ from you,” she murmured and this time she nodded, accepting it deep inside.

                Silence fell between them as she continued to nod in pained understanding, as he merely gazed at her.

                “We’re done for the day so…” She motioned to him. “I would like to return to your quarters and refresh myself, if that’s perfectly fine with you.”

                His lips parted, his chest lifting slightly as he took a breath to reply. But as she lifted blank eyes to him, a mask just like his in place on her face now, his pained frown slipped away and he simply nodded as well. Dropping his eyes, he stepped aside and motioned to the door with the hand holding his helm.

                With one last definitive nod, she strode past him and off the mat, heading for the doorway, his suite, and if she was very lucky, a bit of sleep to wash away the entire emotional mess that the day had become.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Twenty-Two: **

The shower didn’t help the way it normally did and she wondered then what had changed. Was she losing hope? Was she just too tired? There was a frown on her face the entire time she bathed and even as she finished, she wrapped a towel around herself and stared at her reflection in the mirror over the wash basin. So much darkness under her eyes, and they were beginning to lose their shine. That last detail hurt her the most, she realized, and she stared at her own face blankly, blindly.

_What will I become here?_

 


	23. Chapter Twenty-Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, thank you for the comments and the awesome banter, I love it all, lol! I was totally spoiled of something in TLJ (against my wishes) so I logged off DayZee and went over to Tas which doesn't follow as many Reylo tumblrs and is a bit more grounded in my real life. I am forcing myself to overcome what I believe is my anxiety to watch the movie tomorrow night (I hate being surrounded by strangers and being jostled around, it makes me feel like I'm suffocating). I was hoping to have finished sending this fic out before the movie came out so that it wouldn't interfere with how readers saw the movie and how they read this fic. Now that some people have seen it, I don't know if Kylo is meaner to Rey than in my fic, nicer? Who knows.
> 
> What I do know is that by the time I post the next chapter (likely Saturday), I'll have seen the movie and will most likely start to panic over how I portrayed the characters as opposed to how they show up onscreen. Either way, here's hoping there's a ton of Reylo in it and that the fight against the antis hasn't been in vain these last two years. I've been a Reylo from the start and I've encountered some pretty mean stuff too from antis but if there's even a smidge of Reylo in it, I will feel vindicated. So here's hoping!
> 
> Either way, here's the next chapter!

Chapter Twenty-Two:

 

                He avoided having actual conversation with her for _days_ , which didn’t exactly surprise her but still somehow pained her.

                He came for her every day though, appearing at her cell and escorting her down the lift to his quarters to bathe. She always chose the water shower, something longer and more refreshing so as not to rush the return to her cell. And though they were on uneven terms, she still attempted to speak to him, to reach him.

                How did he go for days and days without speaking to anyone, without truly interacting with anyone? From what she understood, his relationships with Hux and Phasma were tenuous and unpleasant; neither of them liked the other even though they all worked together somehow for whatever reason. She was also pretty sure the General had done something to the knight’s previous suite, trapping her within the confines and almost facilitating what could have been her demise. If anything had come of it, she didn’t know for the knight had immediately deposited her back in her cell and vanished soon after verifying that she was fine.

                But if he didn’t speak to anyone, especially not her now, how did he not go completely mad with the silence?

 

                He came that day to escort her to his quarters for her shower as had become their custom.

                Walking the corridors, she ran her eyes over the walls and ceiling again, searching for anything that would aid her in escape, even small and unseemly. But she only noticed the latches where the droids were stored, where certain computer systems stood behind large metallic covers. Even some silver grated covers that housed vents were screwed and bolted, air traveling quietly throughout their systems.

                Aware of him at her back, she sighed inwardly and lowered her head, turning her attention back to the walk to the lift. “Where are we going?” she asked quietly.

                He took a moment to respond. “You know where we’re going,” came the monotonous response.

                She chuckled humorlessly, her shoulders shifting with the gesture. And just as soon as the mirth came, it was gone, and she frowned resignedly as they reached the lift. “How long are you going to keep me here, Ben?” she whispered, shaking her head wearily. “What are you going to do with me?”

                He didn’t respond to that at all.

                The wait for the lift felt eternal, the silence surrounding them heavy and palpable. Lifting a hand, Rey scrubbed at her eye with the palm of a hand, feeling so much older than her twenty years. Her entire body was weary and pained somehow; her meditation worked well to pass the hours and to keep her level but there were moments that she felt such a rigid anger, or a cold and frantic anxiety inside that it literally kept her muscles bunched up and tense for long minutes at a time, finally releasing and leaving her sore and depleted.

                The lift arrived and Kylo Ren motioned her in ahead of him.

                Sighing, she entered the lift and then turned to face outward as he followed, gesturing to a floor and then taking position at the doors as they slid shut behind his tall frame.

                She bowed her head once more as the lift carried them to the floor where his quarters were located, still standing in silence. As the lift slowed and settled, she raised her eyes to him.

                His head was lowered but she couldn’t be sure that he was looking at her, whether his eyes were focused elsewhere. She couldn’t see anything in that moment except the black and chrome helmet and the uniform that kept him draped in darkness.

                The doors slid open onto his floor and he backed out of the lift, turning his body to allow her to follow and then lead them down the corridor to his quarters. Funny how she knew this part of the base; the turns and corners, the sterile walls and shiny floors.

                Reaching his quarters, she stopped directly outside of the doors and lifted her head once more to search the corridors. There was surveillance in these hallways, small consoles in the corners of the hallway compartments with blinking red lights.

                Everyone here was always being watched.

                Waving his hand at the console, Kylo Ren motioned her in and then followed as she entered his quarters. The suite was dark as usual and she frowned toward the peek of bedroom window that was afforded her from the doorway. The transparisteel had been dimmed; it was something she had realized earlier when the rooms had been switched. He fiddled with the opacity of his windows constantly, as if some days he couldn’t bear the sun and other days he needed it like air. From the view she had, she couldn’t tell whether it was morning, afternoon, or evening. Night would have thrown the entire suite into darkness and this was not the same light as that.

                “The refresher,” he stated in that modified voice of his, drawing her back to reality.

                Nodding wordlessly, she turned toward the room, already moving to undress. She knew the drill; strip in the refresher and leave her soiled clothes outside to be cleaned. There would be a fresh set, either new or laundered, waiting for her when she poked her head out of the refresher after she was done.

                And as had become custom, he turned away as she began to undress, lifting his hands to remove his helmet and striding toward his bedroom to wait for her to finish.

                Then he would escort her back to her cell for the night and repeat the following day. Even what should have been the beginning of trainings had been cut short after their last encounter.

                She wasn’t surprised.

                The shower didn’t help the way it normally did and she wondered then what had changed. Was she losing hope? Was she just too tired? There was a frown on her face the entire time she bathed and even as she finished, she wrapped a towel around herself and stared at her reflection in the mirror over the wash basin. So much darkness under her eyes, and they were beginning to lose their shine. That last detail hurt her the most, she realized, and she stared at her own face blankly, blindly.

                _What will I become here?_

                Turning her eyes away, she went to the refresher door and bent even as the door slid open, already reaching for the change of clothes. Taking them into her hands, she backed away to allow the door to close once more and then turned to dry and dress herself slowly. The black garments with the gray sash only seemed to bring the dark circles out further as she checked her reflection again. Then she stooped, picked up her boots and exited the refresher, stepping out into an even deeper darkness.

                Ah. Then it was evening, nearing night. Days could become weeks and she would never know except that he was consistent in treating her more as an unwanted guest than a prisoner; not much by means of comfort but decency nonetheless.

                Turning, she tilted her head to stare into the dark living suite, blinking wide eyes as it took her a bit to get her vision accustomed.

                “Rey,” came Kylo Ren’s deep voice, devoid of that mechanical edge which meant he still hadn’t put his helmet back on.

                Her eyesight finally adjusting, she found him leaning against the wall that separated the living room from his bedroom. “I’m done,” she called toward him quietly and she frowned when she saw that he had changed as well. He still wore black trousers but he had swapped out the heavy, upper body layers for a loose-fitting, sleeveless black top. “What is…what’s going on?” she asked tentatively, suspiciously.

                Coming off the wall with a weary sigh, he straightened, his head bowed, black waves of hair falling around his forehead and cheeks. The black top emphasized his pale skin and muscled arms, his height and broad frame, and she hated every second of it for what the vision of him made her feel.

                Even in the darkness, she saw the slight curl of his lips and heard the sharp exhale of a chuckle.

                Her frown sharpening, she also straightened, becoming indignant. “I’ve told you to stay out of my head,” she stated coldly.

                He nodded as he crossed the room toward her, his head still bowed. “You have,” he agreed quietly, his low voice almost a rumble. “And I did. You’re projecting.”

                Recoiling, Rey opened her mouth to object, to question him, to compose herself as he neared for suddenly all she could smell was his scent mixed with the fragrances of his refresher products and she wanted to be far away then. But he was standing before her by then, wide chest and shoulders at her eye level and, damn it, he wore black well.

              As she continued to keep her stare fixed on his chest, she saw his lips part to speak. “I wish to train you on something. Something specific.”

                Her eyes darted up to meet his in the hazy darkness. “Train me?” she asked slowly. “Now? Me?”

                He nodded. “Now. And yes, you,” he replied and he made a motion to reach for her hand before seeming to catch himself and drawing back quickly. “The sooner, the better. I just…had to weigh the option to train you in this. At all.”

                Her frown eased somewhat. “What is it? What is the training for?” she asked him hesitantly.

                Exhaling heavily, he straightened as if to convince himself and then turned, moving to the doorway and the console beside it. “Come,” he said, glancing back at her as he stopped before the doors.

                Uncertain, Rey gingerly crossed the floor in his stead. She dropped her boots along the way, setting them beside his couch before coming up beside his tall form.

                Motioning to the floor, he nodded. “Sit.”

                Now frowning once more, especially as she didn’t like being ordered around, she backed away a step and then lowered herself to the hard floor, bending her legs in and crossing them. “What’s going on?” she asked.

                Standing wordlessly and waiting for her to finish settling, he then turned to the door console and lifted his hand to it. A small beep registered his handprint but he did not make any selections on the device. Instead, he pressed his palm to the face of the console and narrowed his eyes at it, his expression hardening.

                A flash of blue streaked from his hand to the console, the sound of electricity sizzling the air. Rey flinched as the console was struck with a delicate bolt of brilliant lightning from his palm and promptly short-circuited, the screen going dim.

                Kylo Ren pulled his hand away and then turned to merely look at her from above.

                Rey blinked. “Oh, well that’s lovely. Now we’re both trapped in here,” she stated crossly. “I hope you’re storing food in here somewhere-”

                He seemed to ignore her as he took a step back and then dropped to the floor with her, scooting closer and also crossing his legs so that he mirrored her.

                Rey watched him warily, confused. 

                Staring at her in the blue shadows of the coming night, he leaned forward over his knees. “Open the doors,” he instructed.

                Cocking her head as if she had heard incorrectly, she also leaned forward slightly. “I’m sorry?”

                Motioning to the doors over his shoulder with a tilt of his own head, he repeated the order. “Open the doors.”

                “Open the doors,” she echoed incredulously. And at his arching brow, she motioned upward at the broken console with the wave of her hand. “Well, if I couldn’t open them before, I definitely can’t now! You destroyed the thing! Do you want me to just try to _pry_ the doors open with my fingers-”

                “There are two ways to do it,” he cut her off, seemingly impatient with her complaint. “The easy way or the hard way. I always choose the hard way.”

                Rey sat back on her rear with a skeptical arch to her brow. “I’m shocked,” she stated sarcastically.

                Tossing her a weary look, he leaned forward once more. “If you’re going to do it the other way, you need to focus on the circuitry. I have severed it which means you need to become the conduit between circuits. Spark the electricity again to jar the mechanism to work.”

                Rey stared at him. “Because it’s just that easy,” she sputtered disbelievingly. “Do you even listen to yourself when you speak?”

                His eyes closed impatiently. “Rey. I need you to try it,” he said in a tone that resembled a growl.

                She grimaced in confusion. “Why? Do you know what you’re giving me if I learn how to do this? Why would you _want_ me to learn how-“

                “Because I can’t trust that what happened in the last room won’t happen in this one!” he shouted at her, his face darkening, causing her to jump slightly at his outburst. “The next time you set a room on fire, I may not be here to help you!”

                Rey blinked at him, her mouth running dry.

                Before her, he settled back on his rear and he suddenly looked exhausted. Lifting his hands to his eyes, he rubbed at them roughly before dropping them away, looking even more weary after the gesture.

                Rey dropped her stare for a moment, running them over his hands as he propped his arms on his knees again. He had long slender fingers, hands and arms corded with muscles and veins. “The last time…” she said slowly, her gaze tangled with those hands. “Your General did something to the room, didn’t he? That’s why you asked for the status report from the droid.”

                Kylo Ren didn’t respond though he did exhale loudly and tiredly. “Open the door,” he ordered, his tone now clipped.

                She would obviously not be receiving a response to her question, though it did not help the suspicions she still held. Lifting her eyes from his hands to the dim console, she merely looked at it for a breath. “I don’t know how to do it,” she said quietly. “I’m not even sure that it can be done the way you’re saying-”

                With an exasperated sigh, he waved his hand at the console.

                The screen lit up as if reviving, the commands on its face lighting, a glowing button flashing. Then the doors slid open, power coursing through the console once more.

                Rey stared in surprise.

                With another dismissive gesture from the knight, the doors slid shut and the light dimmed from the screen, the console going cold once more.

                Rey blinked, her lips parting as she looked from the console back to Kylo Ren.

                “Open the door,” he instructed again, his voice weary.

                She looked from him to the door, to the console, and then back to him. “Was that the easy way or the hard way?” she asked.

                “Rey,” he growled.

                Straightening, she shook off his impatience. “Fine! Fine,” she snapped and she sent him a side glare before looking up at the console. “Just remember that if I manage to do this, you’ll wake up one day to find me gone.”

                With a blank expression, he merely stated, “One can only hope.”

                She drew back to toss him a haughty look before glaring again and turning her attention back to the console. “You want me gone that bad, just leave the door open and a TIE fighter waiting,” she grumbled, but she was already half distracted as she focused on the panel.

                He didn’t bother responding to that and seconds later she was engrossed in the task. _Become the conduit_ , she thought to herself, grimacing slightly as she tried to understand how to even accomplish it. _Become the conduit_.

                He sat, watching her impassively.

                She knew within moments that she wouldn’t be able to do it with him staring at her. She tried to focus on the console, tried to tune all of her senses into it. She even attempted to tap into the soft whispers that she considered the voice of the Force. She was greeted with silence and darkness, with nothingness. Shaking her head slightly, she focused even harder on the console, straining to forge a connection.

                _Become the conduit._

                “Spark the electricity,” he said to her softly, his low voice thrumming.

                But now she was distracted as she thought of his voice, as she realized that the whisper of the Force was just as relaxing, as comforting, as his own deep tone, his natural cadence. She grimaced once more, reaching into silence and returning with even more of it.

                “I can’t get it,” she murmured, closing her eyes to see if it would help her concentrate, help her block out the vision of him seated before her.

                “Breathe. Just breathe.”

                She tried again, picturing the console in her head and attempting to see within it to the broken circuits behind the face, imagining a current of electricity jumping from a severed edge to the other, streaming through the fried paths and running over the burned surfaces.

                But nothing came. She saw it all in her head but nothing came of it, the whispers evading her.

                Falling wearily, she bowed her head in defeat. “I can’t get it,” she said quietly, feeling how heavy it was to admit the setback. It wasn’t like her, she didn’t do things like that. She hadn’t survived her entire life on Jakku by admitting defeat.

                He cocked his head at her. “Why does that bother you?” he asked.

                She arched a brow at him. “Why does it bother me?” she echoed, and at his own questioning brow, she threw her hand out toward the console. “Because I failed! Because I can’t ever seem to get the Force to work properly through me when I need it! And because I could’ve used this trick to get _out of this damn place_!” she cried, her hand dropping at her side. And just when she thought she was done ranting, she picked up again with a second wave. “And you’re an idiot for trying to get me to learn how to pull this trick. For a captor, you’re not the best at the job.”

                His brow was still raised as she broke off in despair, her shoulders falling resignedly. When she dwindled into silence at last, he leaned back on his rear, his hands clasping his knees and kneading them with long fingers awkwardly.

                “I’m not trying to teach you so that you can escape,” he said quietly, his dark eyes trained on one of his hands as he dug his fingers into the knee and the muscle surrounding it absentmindedly. “I’m teaching you so that you don’t get trapped in a burning room again.” His chest lifted as he breathed in deeply, as he exhaled in a sigh. “I was here that day. I may not be here the next time. And if it ever comes down to it again, there’s a chance you will still be blocked by override codes and authorizations.”

                Ah. So it had been on purpose then.

                She frowned at him. “Then why try to teach me this if I still won’t be able to get out?” she questioned him in frustration.

                Still running his hand over his knee, he slowed and then stopped, his expression pensive. Then he shifted, rising to his feet.

                Rey lifted her head to follow his movements, feeling unbearably small once he was standing. He motioned her up though and she quickly scrambled to her bare feet as well, brushing at her rear as if she had sat in sand or soil as she stood.

                “If it happens again, you find something to damage the console,” he said to her quietly, his voice falling low. “Once you damage the console, the system falls into basic core programming. It will send an alert that the system has been compromised in the area the console controls but it will also wipe all coding and commands and leave it without any directives in the same area, an area like someone’s living quarters. That would be when you would need to learn to manipulate the circuits.”

                She stared at him, her jaw hanging open.

                He returned her stare, even going so far as to lean to maintain the eye contact. “Rey, do you understand?”

                Shaking her head slowly, she whispered, “Why would you tell me this?”

                Becoming exasperated once more, he merely turned from her and strode off toward his bedroom wordlessly.

                Blinking at his response, she stood in the same spot for a moment too long before chasing after him. “Ben! Why would you tell me that?” she demanded, practically racing to match his long strides toward his bedroom. “Hey!”

                He whirled on her a step inside his bedroom, his arms tight, and she would have been a fool not to notice how the moonlight accentuated the curves and lines in them. “I already told you why I am telling you these things,” he tossed back at her and with a sidelong glare, he moved toward the far wall of his bedroom, waving his hand blindly at it.

                A large section of wall came loose with a hiss and then slid sideways, revealing a lit closet of dark clothes on hangers and folded garments on metal shelves within.

                Rey gaped. “How long has _that_ been there?” she demanded.

                He merely glared at her over his shoulder once more before turning back to it and yanking clothes off the hangers and shelves. Digging into the back corner of the closet, he pulled out a garment that seemed to shimmer in the low moonlight. Turning slightly, he pitched the garment at her. “Go change. You’re sleeping on the couch.”

                She caught the garment against her chest, already glowering. “Such a romantic,” she tossed at him as she looked down at the fabric in her hands. It was a slip almost like the one she had worn the last time she had slept in his quarters except this one was gray. “Are you sure you want me to stay? What if I decide to kill you in your sleep-” she murmured distractedly, suddenly remembering everything that had transpired that night and finding that it rendered her momentarily numb and yet somehow aching.

                He was before her a moment later, his height almost overpowering. One second she was perfectly snide, the next she was backpedaling as he practically ran her over. She staggered away for a second before her adrenaline and her instant anger reared up, and then she was pushing into him herself, almost bumping her chest against his. She would not back down to him and she would not let him bully her around, not after everything that had taken place between them so far.

                “Would you prefer the cell?” he asked dangerously.

                She opened her mouth to insult him, to possibly threaten him again. But then she debated the choice he had put before her and grimaced inwardly. That metal slab was horrible on her back and much too cold at certain hours of the day and night. There was no cushion, no pillow, nothing but hard surface under her.

                And there was no one to talk to. Again, how did he do it, spend so much time avoiding interaction? Avoiding everyone?

                “I will take the couch, thank you,” she stated in a dignified tone and she turned her nose up at him and whirled away, already moving to undo the sash around her waist.

                He made no other sound or gave any acknowledgement as she undressed out in the main room by the couch and yanked the slip over her head. It was such a high quality material and it brought her to pause as she examined it further. Then she turned to look back toward the bedroom slowly, her eyes narrowing as a frown formed on her face suspiciously.

                Why did he have slips in his closet?

                He appeared at the doorway, still looking much too striking in his black outfit, and he reached out to grasp at the edges of the doorframe as he leaned forward easily, half hanging out of his bedroom. She couldn’t help staring at the lines of muscle in his arms as he held himself suspended in the doorway, and she felt vaguely that he knew exactly what kind of effect he was having on her. “If you decide to kill me in my sleep,” he began, his low tone floating in the silence of the room. His eyes slipped down the length of her body and shot back up in what seemed to be appreciation as she glared at him, “don’t bother being gentle. That’s not in our nature.”

                And with those words, he pulled himself back over the threshold to his bedroom and waved a hand at the console on the wall, sending her a hooded glance before the door slid shut, cutting her off from his bedroom and sending her into complete darkness in the main living suite.

                With a last blind glare at the closed door, Rey turned and looked around the cool blackness that was supposedly a room. She couldn’t see a damn thing. Now if she could just find the couch, maybe she could actually catch up on some sleep.

                With a sigh, she stumbled in the direction of the couch from where she had just glimpsed it in pale light and tossed herself down on it. The cushion conformed to her back marvelously and she let out a happy moan before sleep took her away mere moments later.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Twenty-Three: **

His eyes came open in confusion and saw the light of the sun overheard. As he looked up toward it, he understood then how she saw him even if he couldn’t agree with her assessment. But if she saw him blazing with the fire of a brilliant star in the darkness that she knelt in, then that was what he would continue to be for her.

Even if it killed him.

 


	24. Chapter Twenty-Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPOILER!!! Do Not Read if You Do Not Want To Be TLJ Spoiled!!! Just skip this whole next paragraph and read past End Spoiler!!
> 
>  
> 
> You know what's great? Now that some of us have seen TLJ...now we know what Kylo looks like half naked! Keep that in mind for this chapter lol. Also, the "Don't do this," part from the movie. Those words always hurt when I hear them spoken or see them written, when someone says them to someone else that they care for, someone that they see faltering or doing something to pull them apart. I use that phrase in this chapter and it keeps sending goosebumps through me that I really did use their Force Bond the way it was used in the movie and how it is now CANON. I'm almost lightheaded. Late 2015/Early 2016 Reylo Me is having an aneurysm. Also, the finger touch from the movie...yeah, it's used a bit here as well but a bit more frantic. And lastly, I expected a lot more scars on his body! That's still going to be my headcanon though. :D
> 
> You know what?? Rian just needs to get out of my head. Thank you for listening to me vent and squeal.
> 
>  
> 
> END SPOILER.
> 
>  
> 
> I am SUPER thankful for all of your comments and all of the awesomeness you guys bring to this fic and to the comments. Seriously, I get so excited when I read how you all banter with each other and how much excitement you bring to these threads. I saw the movie already and I desperately need people to squee with me because two years is a looooooooooong time to wait for water in the desert. We are an AMAZING fandom and we have held on for so long. This community is exactly what I need right now because HOLY GOD now we have to wait another two years and I'm stressing out, lol!
> 
> But WE GOT THIS! So lets GO!!

Chapter Twenty-Three:

 

                “Rey. Rey.”

                The deep voice was insistent, cutting into her sleep.

                She grumbled at the intrusion, impatiently turning to roll over onto her side to face into the couch. Her head curled into her arms as she dragged them up to her neck and she snuggled right back in, reaching for sleep again.

                A heavy sigh came from overhead, full of exasperation. Then two hands dug under her hips and back, slipping in easily and hauling her completely off the couch.

                She came half-awake with a squeak as she was upended, her arms immediately flying outward for balance and latching onto hard shoulders as she was rudely carried across the room in light darkness.

                “What in the-”

                Her abductor was silent as the door to the refresher slid open to admit them. The light came on within the room, wholly blinding Rey with its abruptness and she couldn’t see as the person holding her strode toward the refresher shower stall, as he tilted and dropped her feet to the floor.

                She found herself standing on unsteady legs, her hands clutching at his shoulders for balance as she struggled to see again, stars and suns exploding before her eyes as she blinked rapidly, wincing.

                “Wake up. I am to escort you,” her abductor stated in his deep tone and then his arms disappeared, his muscled form drawing away and leaving her staggering sightlessly as the shower stall slid shut with a definitive snap.

                “Wait, what-”

                The shower came on, water hitting her straight in the face and causing her to recoil at the sudden cold spray. A gasp broke from her mouth, her hands shooting up to ward off the water even as she realized that she was still wearing a slip. She shrieked in instant anger, finally coming fully aware in time to see the tall light-skinned figure in black trousers slip out of the refresher, leaving her to weather the cold water and the unnecessary shower.

 

                She stumbled out of the refresher clothed only in a towel mere minutes later, her entire form brimming with anger. _“You!”_ she shouted as she stormed into the middle of the knight’s living quarters. Flinging a hand up, she pointed at Kylo Ren in the bedroom as he adjusted his tunic over the undershirt of his uniform. “Next time, just wake me up!”

                He turned to toss her a glance from where he stood in the morning sunlight, reaching to lift the wide belt to his uniform off the bed. “I tried that. It didn’t work,” he stated and his dark eyes left hers to sweep down her body clothed only in the towel, only to then slide back up slowly, musingly.

                Feeling her anger turn into something darker, she advanced on him. “You don’t get to do that! You don’t get to _look_ at me like that! If this is how you’re going to be, just toss me back in that cell!”

                He merely returned her glare, his brow lifting, his eyes becoming hooded. “Agreed. We will do that tonight then.” And he strapped his belt on as she hovered in the doorway, her entire form electrified with rage. Silence hung in the air between them for a moment and then, as if abruptly remembering she was still there, he turned and motioned back toward the main room. “You can dress out there. I set out clothes for you-”

                “You’re an animal,” she hissed at him and she turned away before seeing if her words had any reaction. Storming to the couch, she found the set of clothes he had mentioned and she didn’t care as she whipped the towel off, as she dragged the trousers out from under the tunic and sash and stepped into them, yanking them up her legs onto her hips. Half naked, she sent a glare over her shoulder but he had disappeared from the doorway deeper into his bedroom and she was suddenly equal parts angry and disappointed. Turning back around, she pulled on the bindings for her breasts and then the top over it, long edges hanging as she wrapped the sash around her waist to secure it.

                His footsteps neared again, seemingly slow and absentminded as they paused in his doorway.

                She whirled to face him, her animosity simmering. “Where are we going?” she demanded.

                He held his helmet in his gloved hand and he was a tall, dark shadow in the doorway, the morning sun casting his face into darkness. “Not we. You. I am to escort you to the Supreme Leader.”

                Her throat immediately ran dry. Feeling panic shoot through her, she shook her head unconsciously, her fingers drawing into weak fists. “N-no. I don’t…”

                He seemed to hesitate though his face remained blank.

                Feeling her breath quicken, Rey shook her head again. “I don’t want to see him,” she whispered and she closed her eyes, remembering then how it had felt the first time; the pain, the fear, the coldness. How easily the Supreme Leader had dismantled her. “I don’t want to-”

                He was moving, coming forth from the doorway and lifting his helmet to his head.

                As he neared, she raised her eyes to him, attempting calmness when all she wanted to do was turn and run in the opposite direction. “Ben. Ben,” she whispered quickly, urgently. “Please, I don’t want to see him. I don’t-”

                The helmet was slipped on, the mechanism whirring as it clamped down onto Kylo Ren’s face and settled. He took a step to move around her even as she pleaded with him, as she followed his gestures. But then his gloved hand streaked out as he passed and he snatched her arm up in a tight grip, yanking her behind as he strode past. “I’ve told you not to call me by that name,” he said to her, his voice mechanical and monotonous once more.

                And now he was dragging her as she fought him, as she dug her heels in. “No. No. I’m not going to see him. I’m not going to see him-”

                “He will change you. He will help you. You will understand what it means to be-”

                She let out a full furious shriek at his words, at his tight grip and immense strength as she was yanked along behind him. _“No!”_ she shouted at him as she pried at his fingers and swung at him, as her strikes proved somehow ineffective against his body and bounced off his helmet. Finding that futile, she then shoved her weight low, reaching out to snatch at the edge of the couch and hang on. It was almost comical, the lengths she went to and how it must’ve looked to a casual observer, but her fear had ratcheted to extreme and there was no way she would willingly allow him to take her to see that creature again. “He isn’t going to change me, Ben! He’s going to _kill_ me-”

                With a growl that was somehow equal parts feral and robotic, he stopped and whirled, his fingers digging so deeply into her flesh that she already felt where his fingertips would leave distinct bruises. “I am not going to let that happen,” he hissed as he dragged her close, lifting her back to her feet, her fingers clawing up the side of the couch as she was righted. “Now either you walk with me to see the Supreme Leader or I drag you.”

                Staring at his black metallic face, seeing herself reflected distortedly, unnaturally, in the curving chrome, she bit back the panic, her heart pounding. She was sure he felt the beating through his layers of uniform clear to his skin as she found herself hauled in tight to his rigid form, but the defiance that followed was not to be contained.

                Glaring as she slowly came down from the heights of fear, she lowered her eyes to search his out blindly behind his helmet. “Seems like you’ll have to drag me,” she whispered heatedly, her brow drawing low.

                Exhaling faintly, the sound emerging mechanically, he gave a slow nod. “So be it.” And he released her arm and drew away from her.

                Stumbling backward, Rey found her balance in time for him to throw a hand up and claw his fingers.

                _“No-”_

                Feeling as if her entire body was now in a vise, she was hauled forward by an invisible force, the tip of her feet dragging across the floor as she was summoned to him. Her arms were clipped to her sides, her head arched sideways at an uncomfortable angle.

                “You will see the Supreme Leader and if you will not go willingly, I will escort you this way,” he stated in his deep tone.

                Blinking, fighting the tears that threatened to rise, she exhaled in a rattle. “Ben,” she whispered through frozen lips and a closed jaw. “Please.”

                “Now, come,” he said instead and he turned without another word and strode to the doorway, waving another hand at the console and storming through as the doors slid open with a hiss.

                She was dragged along, no longer in control, her body following behind his, frozen and rigid.

 

                Rey staggered as she was shoved into the room and released from the Force hold. Falling to her knees, she winced and then pushed to her feet, darting to the doorway. The sides of her fists came down on the doors as they slid shut immediately behind Kylo Ren’s departing form and she shrieked wildly into the metal, screaming in her head as well.

                _No. No! Don’t do this._ _Don’t do this again-_

                The doors stood shut, impervious to the bangs of her fists and the flats of her hands as she brought them down again and again on their surface. Fear crashed within like a tidal wave, sudden and overwhelming, and she felt tears cloud her vision as she beat at the doors, as she searched their sleek surface for some sort of purchase, some kind of release.

                And then the surge of darkness swelled deep inside and she banged harder, struggling. _Frantic_.

                The Supreme Leader was here.

                The voice was low at first, prodding. She ignored it, darting to the doorframes, searching them for a console to open the doors. The walls stood bare, just as sterile and blank as the steel of the doors. How did anyone even enter this room? There wasn’t even a console to work with, to damage, to attempt to bypass it the way Ben had taught her-

                The voice rose with such speed that she was caught unprepared. He was suddenly in her head; loud, dripping with hate, with such darkness that her legs gave under her as if he had physically snapped the bones within. She hit the ground violently, her knees striking hard surface, and she reacted even as pain streaked through her thighs, her hands clawing at the closed doors in panic.

                _No, no, no-_

                The darkness grew again, reaching for her, visible at the corners of her vision, the corners of her mind She had been here before, had succumbed before, and now the terror deep inside was also one of recognition; she knew what would come in this room, what would happen to her mind and how her body would react. She brought a fist down in one last terrified gesture before she fell around her knees and curled in, her arms circling her head instinctively.

                _You are a child. You are weak. Do you think you can protect yourself from me?_

                She tensed, her arms tightening, clutching at herself as if she could fight him off. He was the monster under the bed; if she could wrap herself up tightly in her blanket, if she could draw herself into a cocoon, he would not be able to reach her, would not be able to get his claws into her ankle to drag her down to the floor and then under the pallet where he would consume her flesh. She would be able to run from him to protect herself-

                As she thought it, something else rose inside of her, an alien feeling in itself but a presence that was startlingly familiar. She twitched under her arms, her body convulsing in surprise. Then the sensation rose further, a soft whisper in her ear and a shell forming from the new voice, murmuring.

                When Snoke’s hiss came again, when he brought his visions of darkness and wrath in the form of his black knight with the flaming red blade, she lifted her mind’s eye to the sky and saw the shield that had formed overhead, saw rays of sunlight streaming through the blackened and bloody clouds that were gathering. She blinked, inside and outside of herself, her body trembling. The wet soil beneath her in this nightmare suddenly grew lush with green grass and wildflowers and she looked toward the knight where he stood still, his feral lightsaber in his grip. But he did not advance, his tattered hood drawn low over his head, flying in the cool breeze all around. He seemed to merely wait, half hidden in light and darkness, the sun as it broke through the red clouds overheard and the shadows of that apocalyptic sky.

                And as Snoke’s voice fell away into the distance, no longer as strong and relentless as he had been only moments earlier, she found that if she could just stay where she was, bathing in the sunlight that was in her head, in this place, she would be okay. She would survive this. She could even persevere.

                But somewhere deep within herself, she felt a sudden distress that she could not ease.

 

                “Ren!” Hux rapped out, his voice echoing in the control room.

                He came alive, his masked face lifting soundlessly, his figure tight. He tilted his head toward the red-haired General wordlessly even as he felt his entire frame quake. He couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t split his attention quite so easily when he was being yanked in separate directions as he was. He grimaced under his helmet, away from the General’s prying eyes, but his voice came smoothly, distorted perfectly. “General,” he returned through gritted teeth, his voice slipping out mechanically.

                “Did you hear what I said?” Hux asked him, his lips pinching, pale blue eyes fixed on the black mask facing him.

                Of course he hadn’t, but it wasn’t a priority at the moment. He cocked his head away slightly, eyes shifting blankly beneath the helm as he honed in on Rey’s familiar mental signature. How strange that he could recognize her that way now; that he would be able to find her across the entire galaxy by the scent, taste, and touch of her mind alone. How indescribably intimate.

                But he couldn’t reveal himself where she was, couldn’t fight back in that arena though it didn’t mean that he would let her wage the battle alone. Not when he knew that the Supreme Leader could very well extinguish her light before she could be of any use to him.

                He shook his head at his own words, flinging them away. No. That wasn’t what he wanted of her, what he _needed_ of her-

                “If you are distracted, perhaps we can continue this conversation at another time. Perhaps in the Supreme Leader’s chambers-”

                He snapped his head back to face the General and even as his hand flew to his side where his lightsaber rested, he was moving toward the General, his height and breadth immediately shoving the General back as he advanced. The last thing he needed was one such as Hux to be more of a problem than an asset, and in that moment the General was beginning to push his limits. The Supreme Leader could very well use the red-haired general’s expertise in strategy and combat but it was all theoretical; the man had very little experience or knowledge in actual battle, and absolutely none in the ways of the Force and in the dealings Ren had with the Supreme Leader.

                And Kylo Ren had had quite enough of Hux barging in on his meetings with the Supreme Leader to continue to allow it. He may have gone for the General with murder on his mind when he had discovered the man’s authorization signature overriding the systems governing his own quarters, but killing the General had not been an option once the knight had spoken to the Supreme Leader concerning the incident. Snoke needed Hux alive and unharmed to lead his army which was more than the knight needed at that moment.

                The control room fell silent save for the thrum and whirr of the computer stations. Hux stumbled backward against the console at his back as the knight came to a stiff stop, his hand hovering over his lightsaber. “Let this be the last time you attempt to threaten me,” he murmured softly into the General’s face, his broad shoulders beginning to rise and fall erratically. Deep within, a part of him reached out toward his apprentice almost instinctively for her calm, her stillness, even grasping urgently at her light. _Anything_. He had fallen back on her to bring him tolerance when he had needed it before.

                Instead, he came up against the darkness that was threatening her now that he had been distracted. The struggle made him angrier, dangerous, and he found that he couldn’t focus solely on what he needed because of this pale, blustering man he had cornered against the console.

                “You know the extent of my patience and you have made it an increasingly common practice to tread that line. I would suggest you mind your duties and allow me to see to mine,” he advised in a deep, metallic tone, his words coming off almost gentle.

                Hux’s face reddened slightly as his words but as Ren moved to draw back, his mouth betrayed him. “You have let your duties suffer since bringing that girl here,” he spat at the knight, his lips tightening. “A Force Sensitive? You have brought a _threat_ onto this base! Since the beginning, since you _discovered_ her, all she has been is a risk to the First Order! You have allowed her to-”

                Ren’s attention centered on the General almost painfully in the next moment. His hand streaked out, fingers clawing into talons as he took hold of Hux by the neck, fingertips digging into the pale flesh and immediately squeezing.

                Hux’s words cut off as he choked, his own hands lifting to clutch at Ren’s wrist and fingers, swiping at him frantically.

                “You should thank that threat that you say I brought onto this base. If not for her, I would have killed you long before today,” he hissed. He barely registered the General’s flailing hands, merely tightened his grip when a wayward punch caught him at the edge of his helmet. The force was barely enough to distract him and he turned his head back to face Hux, readjusting his hold on the General’s neck almost effortlessly. “She is the only thing saving your life even now-”

                The doors slid open behind him and a sharp voice rang out in the cold room, lightly accented and mechanical. _“Commander!”_

                He ignored the Captain as she came to a hard stop in the doorway but as she called out once more, he shook his head inwardly, his fingers loosening. They felt as if they had cramped and he wondered then how much strength he had put into the hold, if it had only been a physical one.

                Releasing the General, Ren backed away, his hand falling at his side as the Captain hesitated at the door still. Bowing his head slightly to compose himself, he murmured, “The next time you wish to barge in on my meeting with the Supreme Leader, reconsider.” And as the general gasped for air, he whirled around to leave.

                Phasma stood stiffly as he swept past her and exited, his hand finally leaving his side and the lightsaber clipped to it in his anger.

                As the door closed behind him, he felt the fury burning inside of him, felt the weight of it and how it kept his form so rigid that he could’ve snapped with a mere touch. He had allowed the General to distract him and now he could barely feel Rey. Her mental voice and presence were distant, so far away that she seemed to be on the other side of the galaxy.

                He tossed himself onto the lift, only feeling calm return as the doors closed and began to take him down to the hangar bays. As he descended, he lifted his head and reached out once more, wary. He knew what he would encounter, especially if he dug far and deep for the scavenger. He would encounter-

                He found her a moment later just as the lift slowed and stopped at the base floor. As the doors slid open, he took one step before he felt the sudden weight of darkness follow the flickering light that was Rey. His legs instantly lost some of their strength and he reached out blindly for the lift wall, staggering.

                It was worse than before. Darker. Heavier. Much more painful.

                Grimacing, he attempted to straighten himself and found that he could barely even walk with the sudden weight all around him. He blinked and saw red, the hangar drenched in it as if it was dripping with blood. Blinking rapidly to clear the harsh image away, he stumbled down the long path, TIE fighters clamped down and awaiting repairs on either side, other vessels refueling.

                The Supreme Leader had never been one to use a light touch, that much he knew. But if he could barely walk, could barely see anything except blood, how strongly was he batting at Rey?

                Coming to the end of the landing strip, he lifted his face as his feet settled on uneven earth and grass, and he saw the clearing and the woods that bordered the base then; saw the splashes of red in the forest’s shadows, saw the fluid as it almost seemed to trickle from gnarled branches.

                He had lost contact with Rey when the General had threatened them and now he found himself flailing, searching the distance for her. Even as he saw the dim light of her, he felt that she was reaching for him just as he grasped for her. Just that one small inch more and their fingers would touch, would brush against each other’s in the wild attempt.

                _Ben…_

                He closed his eyes as he found her once more, as he saw the blackness around her, the despair. He could almost hear the screams in those shadows. _Her_ screams, the unfamiliar calls reaching from the depths and reverberating in her head, in his now.

                His own screams from so long ago that he had since become silent for no one had ever heard and no one had ever answered back anyway, except for the voice that had become the Supreme Leader’s. 

                But in that cold darkness, he felt warm suddenly.

                His eyes came open in confusion and saw the light of the sun overheard. As he looked up toward it, he understood then how she saw him even if he couldn’t agree with her assessment. But if she saw him blazing with the fire of a brilliant star in the darkness that she knelt in, then that was what he would continue to be for her.

                Even if it killed him.

 

                She didn’t know how long she sat in the field of green grass, pale white flowers all around her with the blackened red sky overhead, the knight standing sentry before her. She had long ago sat before him when he had remained still and motionless, and then lain out in the soft grass, feeling the elusive sun as only shafts of it fell from the torched clouds. The blackness rumbled overhead like an angry thunderstorm but in her small clearing she was safe and warm.

                She had attempted to speak to the man in black with the red, flaming lightsaber but he had remained silent the entire time as if waiting.

                Or as if he had been stilled by another force, one ever more powerful and resistant.

                The thunder came again, far off and muffled, red lightning in the dark clouds, but the wild white flowers blew in a soft breeze around her. Sounds came in the distance; a babbling stream, the call of the forest, the brush of the leaves as branches waved.

                “I know what you’re doing,” she whispered to the sky, to the shafts of sunlight streaking in through the red and black skies, hazel eyes searching the clouds, her fingers plucking at the blades of grass at her sides. She risked a glance toward the man with the tattered hood and hidden face. “How long do you think you can do this?”

                The reply came on the breeze, faint and tremulous.

                _As long as I need to. As long as it takes._

                And as she gently shook her head, her lashes dropping low, she was suddenly pulled awake.

 

                The warmth was immediately gone, hard hands on her, yanking her to her feet.

                Disoriented, she blinked in the sudden darkness of the cavernous room surrounding her, fumbling as she realized that she was being dragged along the floor and out through the door that had been so firmly locked what seemed like mere minutes before. She turned her head to look over her shoulder as she was hauled out and the gloomy blue image of the Supreme Leader was vanishing into nothingness at the center of the room. Confused, she merely watched the doors slide shut behind her before she was yanked on her knees to face forward.

                The red-haired General stood before her once more, his hands clasped behind his back as he stared down at her. A pair of stormtroopers stood, one on either side of her, still clutching her upright.

               She lifted her eyes to the General wordlessly, yanking slightly at her arms. The gesture merely caused the troopers to tighten their grip on her.

                This time, when the General grasped her by the chin, she was ready for him. She glared as he lifted her head to his, as he leaned in to look at her closely, and the confusion in his stare almost brought a black smile to her face; that she would be unharmed, untouched by the Supreme Leader’s power, his darkness.

                If he only knew the reason why.

                “Not what you expected?” she asked Hux coldly.

                The General glared at her for another long moment before his fingers tightened, causing the mirth to fall away into pain. Wincing, she made a small sound as he pulled her even closer, as he searched her face. “Keep your pretty little mouth shut,” he hissed at her, his fingertips almost threatening to tear through her skin.

                Even flinching, Rey attempted to compose herself through the throbbing, to resist falling at his feet. “There’s nothing here for you,” she whispered to him, her cheeks burning as his fingers dug in, as they promised to leave bruises.

                Anger clouded the General’s face at her words but as they locked eyes, he merely released her and straightened to look toward the stormtroopers at her side. “Ren,” he growled in comprehension, his entire form becoming rigid as he searched the corridors on either side of them, as he hesitated. Then, with fury igniting on his pale face, he hissed, “Take her to his chambers! I will bring her his head.”

                Rey’s jaw dropped open at his words and a second later she was being hauled to her feet, already stumbling behind the troopers. “No. No-”

                Then her voice came in anger, a wave of such sudden fury that she couldn’t even be sure that it had come entirely from her.

                _“No!”_

                As if expelling heat that she hadn’t even known she’d collected within herself, she felt as if she ruptured. Rage flew from her in a wave, breaking out in one wide burst of darkness. The troopers were flung away from her violently, impacting against the hallway walls on either side of her, the General flying backward. As she spun around in wide-eyed disbelief, he crashed to the floor and slid, limbs flailing.

                She had done that, she thought for a mere stunned moment, her head turning to look toward the fallen stormtroopers, to glance back at the General a second later. And the rage was there again as she stared at the fallen red-haired man, simmering inside of her suddenly until she felt it begin to rise and tremble, ready to boil over.

                How dare this pale and weak man _threaten_ her, threaten one that she cared for?

                Bowing her head and seeing only red, she turned to stride toward the general, her hands and arms tightening and readying for a fight. “You’re not going to hurt him,” she whispered as she advanced on him. “You’re not going to do _anything_ to him-”

                On his rear, Hux merely stared up at her, his jaw grinding, his expression pinching as she approached.

                She was suddenly back on Starkiller then; as if stepping from one room to another she was there, only this time she was circling Kylo Ren’s fallen form in the snow, Luke’s lightsaber lit and ready in her hand. She blinked down at the General as he returned her gaze from where he sat huddled on the floor.

                Recoiling, Rey shook herself free of the vision until it became the General again before her eyes. And she realized a moment later that she was free; Hux sat stunned before her and the two stormtroopers guarding here were unconscious behind her.

                This was her chance.

                Whirling around, she searched the hallway left and right, attempting to place her location. She had been brought out unconsciously the last time but she had seen where she had been dragged from, where the lift was. Spinning once more, she took off past Hux’s form on the floor, racing as fast as she could. She had wasted precious seconds on approaching and threatening the General, and now every surveillance device in these hallways was recording her escape. Behind her, she heard Hux call out furiously, issuing orders, but she ignored him as she took the nearest corner and recognized the next hallway. Running down its length, she knew the lift was just around the next corner. Once in it, she could attempt to find her way out of it in mid-descent, sneak onto another floor, possibly squeeze into an open vent somewhere.

                Just as she turned the last corner at full speed, she caught a sudden, quick glimpse of a trooper in chrome with a red and black cloak waiting.

                Then a silver-armored arm lifted, catching her in the face and neck effortlessly. The impact hurt for less than a second for Rey was already unconscious by the time she hit the floor.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Twenty-Four: **

He released the softest of sighs at her caress, his entire body seeming to relax freely and giving himself over to her. With a sad lift to her brow, she ran her hands over him; from his neck down along his broad shoulders, trailing across his scars and hard angles, to his wide chest down to his ribs and his waist.

He seemed to wait for her as she paused.

 


	25. Chapter Twenty-Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still can't stop thinking about TLJ. Please someone, stop making me hurt like this.
> 
> On the upside, I'm seeing it again tonight. :D
> 
> Also, smuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut!!

Chapter Twenty-Four:

 

                She didn’t know how many hours had passed in which she had been unconscious but when Rey stirred, her entire face immediately reminded her as to what had transpired. Wincing and half whining miserably, she looked around, recognizing Kylo Ren’s quarters. The room was pitch-black and she realized it was because very little light trickled in from the night outside of the knight’s bedroom windows.

                She was on the floor. More troopers had probably deposited her in his quarters and left her wherever she had fallen.

                But where was Ben?

                Carefully rising to her feet, she stumbled toward his refresher, grimacing as she felt her cheek and jaw throb. Catching herself on the refresher doorway, she blinked and staggered as the lights came on within, momentarily blinding her. Exhaling wearily, she trudged toward his sink and the mirror overhead.

               Lifting her eyes to her reflection, she gasped in disbelief, startled fully awake. Then as if not believing her eyes, she leaned in for a closer look.

                The entire left side of her face, below the cheek and along her jaw, was purple.

                Blinking at her image, she raised a hand to it, wincing as she touched her fingertips to the dark bruises. Even that light brush caused her to hiss in pain.

                The Captain. She had run directly into the Captain in mid-escape and the woman had backhanded her quite soundly from the looks of it. Turning her head back to look at her whole face, she ran her eyes over herself. Pale, pinched, and bruised. What a look for her.

                Dropping her eyes away, she ran the water and bent over it, lifting some to her mouth to rinse it out. It hurt to move her jaw at all and even holding the fluid in her cheek stung. Shaking her head with a deep sigh, she instead snatched up a small cup the knight had set aside and she filled it, straightening some to drink water for her parched throat. She hadn’t eaten anything today and this was the first bit of water she’d had all day as well besides when she had used the refresher earlier in the morning.

                Placing the cup aside, she shut the water off and dragged both hands to the sink to rest her weight on her palms, her head bowed.

                “I’m not going to be beaten here. I’m not going to let that happen,” she whispered to herself softly, her fingers wrapping around the edges and tightening, clawing momentarily before loosening. “I’m not going to let it happen-”

                Something scratched at the door to the quarters followed by a shuffle of clothes, of feet.

                Drawing away from the sink, Rey moved to the refresher doorway slowly and looked out with a growing frown.

                The noises came again and then the suite doors were sliding open, letting in sterile white light from the corridor outside.

                Kylo Ren burst into his rooms like a maniac, his body barely hanging from the doorframe as he smashed his palm on the console.

                Rey’s eyes widened as he staggered in several steps and promptly collapsed to his knees, his shoulders shaking violently. The door slid shut behind him with a soft hiss, enveloping the entire room in darkness.

                She stared at his bowed frame for a long moment. Then snapping back to herself, she hurried forth, dropping to her knees beside him, uncertain as how to touch him, whether she should even attempt it. “W-wha…Ben? Ben, are you okay?” she asked him fearfully, bending to catch a glimpse of the side of his helmet.

                He didn’t reply and as she reached out with a hand to place it on his shoulder, she felt the trembling in his form. A moment later, as she searched mentally, she came up against the hard door of his mind, the firm wall in place, the mental strength it was taking him even then to hold it erect. Her eyes widened, her brow lifting, and then she was reaching out with her hands, taking hold of his helmet.

                He didn’t even fight her, his entire body heaving, his mind gray.

                Her fingers found the latch on the helmet and flicked it, feeling the slight breath of air as the pieces of his helmet released and came open. She yanked the thing off him and flung it aside, ignoring the hard sound as it bounced on his floor. Her hands darted to his face, digging under his jaw and forcing his head up so she could examine him.

                His skin was sallow, ashen. Sickly. As she lifted his face away from the floor, she saw the heaviness in his eyes, the ghastly expression he held, and she suddenly understood what had caused this in him.

                His Supreme Leader’s attack on her. He had been there with her after all, she hadn’t dreamed it then. And now he was suffering the effects of it instead of her. Her brow drew in as she trailed her fingers over his face, clasping it between her palms lightly, her thumb tracing his scar blindly.

                Something was rising within him and it wasn’t mental.

                Understanding it for what it was, she cursed under her breath and quickly moved to drag his arm over her shoulder. He let her shift him numbly and she braced herself, lifting herself into a crouch and preparing. Then with a grunt, her legs pushed her body to her feet, dragging him with her.

                It was her mind that did the work, though. For a blissful second, in her fear and worry, she heard the whispers deep within; she felt the pull, felt the Force work through her as she hefted him up alongside her. He was hauled to his feet, his weight resting on her side and shoulders, and she focused her eyes on the refresher door.

                Her first step was unbalanced but her second step was stronger. Then she was crossing his main suite surely, urging his legs forward, ushering him into the light of the refresher.

                His mind was blank, unfocused, and there was the smallest undercurrent of fear running through him. But as she attempted to split her focus between carrying him and digging into him, she found that he pulled himself in tightly, fending off any slight prods from her. She dropped the attempt to read him, instead barging into the refresher and lowering him back to his knees. Unwinding his arm from her shoulders, she darted to the stall and set it to shower. A sonic shower was the norm but she felt then that he needed the cascade of water, the iciness of a cold spray to shock him awake the way he had done to her the last time she’d had an appointment with his Supreme Leader.

                He quivered, his shoulders convulsing as she turned back to him and she knew within the moment that he was going to go. She raced to the toilet, lifted the seat and took hold of him by the arm and shoulder, yanking at him.

                Sensing relief close, he pushed himself the rest of the way, took hold of the side of the toilet and bowed his head over the bowl. A second later his body heaved and Rey had a moment to fling her leg over his waist so that she straddled him overhead and reached out to sweep his hair off the sides of his face.

                He retched into the bowl, hacking so strongly that she almost felt the convulsions within her own body. She grimaced, holding his wavy locks back and as he recoiled to drag in a hard breath, she reached over to the sink beside the toilet and flicked the cold water dial, letting the fluid run over her palm until it turned icy. As he heaved and pulled at the contents of his stomach again, she dragged her cold hand to his forehead and pressed it to his skin, holding tightly to soothe him.

                He sighed softly under his palm, coughing into the toilet bowl. And then he stiffened again, his shoulders tightening and she held on, tucking his hair back and leaning over toward the stream of cold water to cool her palm again. He attempted to vomit once more, bucking between her knees, his knuckles whitening with the effort.

                Her brow furrowing, Rey brought her hand back to his forehead and then his cheek, smoothing it and pressing it to cool his sudden fever. Water ran in cold droplets down the side of his face but he didn’t seem to notice as he settled back on his haunches, his breathing ragged. Nothing had come up, not even bile, and she suddenly wondered when had been the last time he had eaten as well. She had never seen him consume anything at all, only to drink water sometimes.

                Searching the sink, Rey snatched up the empty cup from earlier. Reaching over him, she ran it under the water to fill, spill and then refill. Straightening again, she held the cup of water in front of his face. “Drink it,” she ordered him. “Wash out your mouth. I need to get you out of your clothes and into the refresher.”

                She felt him resist her slightly at her request, felt his strength rise. She smacked it down mentally, barely exerting any pressure at all. “Just listen to me! I’m not going to hurt you!” she shouted at him and she pushed the cup against his cheek again, her fingers tightening on his hair.

                Seeming to judge his position then, he snatched the cup of water from her and took a mouthful, swishing it to clear his mouth before spitting it out into the toilet bowl. She grimaced as he took another deep pull of the cup, releasing his hair to jab at the button to flush the contents of the bowl. As it disappeared in a whirlpool, her hand returned to his hair, her fingers gentle now as she gathered his loose locks and tucked them back behind his ear. As the water resumed its calm surface, he spit out the soiled liquid in his mouth and inhaled deeply, almost gasping.

                She sensed that he was no longer in danger of throwing up but she waited as he took the rest of the water into his mouth and drank it down like a man dying of thirst in the heat of Jakku. Whisking the cup out of his hand as he finished, she set it aside on the sink and backed up slightly from his frame, one hand still in his hair, the other wrapping around his shoulder and pulling. “Come on,” she said urgently.

                He followed after a beat, carefully rising from his knees to his full height.

                He was too damn tall. With a shake of her head, Rey turned him around to face her and looked at his entire uniform, not even knowing where to begin. Well, the belt seemed to be holding everything together and so she moved to that. He swayed in her grip, a black-clothed arm streaking out to support himself on the wall of the refresher as he almost stumbled.

                “I can barely see,” he whispered to her, his eyes shut tightly, his frame wavering.

                She laughed lightly though it came out sounding absentminded. “Well, your eyes are closed,” she remarked but a second later she quickly added, “That’s okay.” She tossed the belt aside and dragged her hands through the layers of clothes he wore. “That’s okay,” she said again distractedly with a frown. Her fingers found the top layer of his uniform, the tunic, and she rose on tiptoe to drag it up over his head, tossing it aside dismissively. Then came the layers beneath until he wore only his dark pants and boots. She turned down the toilet seat with a flick of her hand and forced his heavy body to sit on its surface, kneeling to drag the boots off. “I have to take your pants off.”

                He exhaled, wincing, but at her words his eyes came open to focus on her hazily.

                “Can you hear me?” she asked him anxiously. “I need to take your pants off.” And as he frowned deeply, she took hold of his face with a cool palm, dragging it down to meet her gaze. “I won’t hurt you,” she said to him earnestly.

                He stared at her for another long moment and it was only when he spoke again that she understood why he had been staring at her so intently even through his fog. “What happened to your face?” he asked and he was suddenly stirring. As she watched, he seemed to awaken, his face darkening. “Rey. What happened to your face?” he asked again though this time it came out as a demand for an answer.

                She shook her head, her eyes holding his though her hands fell to rest on his knees and thighs. “It’s nothing right now,” she said to him and she curled her fingers into the hard muscles in his legs. “We’ll talk about it later. Right now I need to get you undressed and into the refresher. The water will help you. Okay?”

                His dim glare held still but as she tilted her head waiting for his response, he finally nodded silently.

                Nodding as well, Rey pushed herself into action. Urging him back up to his feet, she steadied him and then knelt before him slowly, maintaining the eye contact.

                He watched her blankly, his lips parting as he took a heavy breath.

                Rey took hold of the beltline of his trousers and lowered them roughly, averting her eyes as she felt was proper. He swayed under her ministrations, his hand reaching for the wall once more to steady himself as she urged one foot up and then the other to free him of his trousers.

                Then she was rising back up, her hand sweeping under his arm and urging his weight onto her frame. His scent drifted from him, as warm as the heat coming off his body from his fever. “Come on,” she murmured and she pulled him toward the shower. “I need to get you under the water.”

                He staggered after her, seemingly aware that he was putting a large amount of his massive weight on her but also needing the feel of the water on his body, the cleansing of both body and soul after what he had just put himself through.

                For she felt in their shared web that he had undertaken something hard and incredible, and he had done it for _her._

                Pausing before the refresher, Rey hesitated and looked down at herself. She was fully clothed in the items he had given her. Stopping to toe off her boots, she straightened once more and then she pushed ahead, dragging him with her as she stepped into the refresher and under the icy water.

                The blast served to awaken him further and he recoiled from the spray, stumbling backward for a moment. She took that step back with him, her arms quivering with the amount of strength it took to hold him. Then she yanked him back under the water, forcing him to stand as she stepped out from under his arm and wrapped around his front, reaching up through the spray.

                His face was restless, pained, as she took it into her hands and raised it to the water. He had reflexively taken hold of her for balance when she had slipped out from under his arm and taken away her support of him. Now he allowed her to move him, to lift his head to the water and to trail her fingers through his hair, wetting it. He had never been at her mercy like this, not since she had cut him down in the snowy woods, but this was entirely different from then and she found that she was both hesitant and fascinated.

                As he held himself steady, hands heavy on her shoulders, she reached blindly for the side of the stall, fishing around for a bar of soap. She lathered her hands with it, looking back toward him intently and searching his weary expression as he lowered it down and away from the spray of the water, his dark hair falling thick and wet around his cheeks and throwing his face into shadow. Then she reached for him again.

                He released the softest of sighs at her caress, his entire body seeming to relax freely and giving himself over to her. With a sad lift to her brow, she ran her hands over him; from his jaw and neck slowly down along his broad shoulders, trailing across his scars and hard angles, feeling the heat from his skin as she slowed to dig her fingertips into the tension there, fingers slippery. His eyelashes fluttered under her touch, water running free of his heavy waves, his mouth tightening into a tight line as she slid her slick hands to his wide chest, palms kneading the muscle she found there before moving down to his ribs, to his waist.

                He seemed to wait for her as she paused.

               She sent him another quick glance and then she steadied herself as she set the bar aside and trailed her soapy fingers over his hips and pelvis, down low.

                He exhaled under her hands, his hard body swaying, his grip on her shoulders tightening and then loosening as if he didn’t know what to do or what he needed. As she slipped her hands around him, his head fell forward to his chest, unbearably close to hers, the cold spray running over his dark hair and cascading off his broad shoulders.

                Running her hands over him, she focused on washing him with the icy water but she couldn’t help measuring him. He was long, thick in her hand as she wrapped her fingers around him. His shoulders pulsed as she trailed her hands over him, one after the other, running soap over his length. If he hadn’t been weakened, she would have enjoyed having him at her mercy the way she did then, her fingers light, stroking.

                He was hard within another moment as she washed him and she stared, captivated. She had felt him erect against her before, in the middle of the night after her vivid dreams and her recollections. But to hold him in her hand here and now, it was almost overwhelming. She stroked him again, circling her hands around him and dragging him to length.

                He swayed once more, his hands leaving her shoulders and lifting to press to either side of the stall to hold himself steady. He was the picture of sacrifice then, his strong arms holding him straight even as his head bowed low to his chest, his legs sustaining him as he parted them, naked and waiting.

                Rey trailed her eyes over his hard frame, from his tense limbs to his wet torso and she was drawn to him even as she tried to remember why she had entered the refresher with him to begin with. She released him, feeling his hardness fall against her hip as she straightened along his tall frame, her mouth mere inches from his. She felt tiny beside his height, overshadowed; protected though he needed her more than she did him in that moment. Gently, she lifted her hands and took hold of his face, his jaw hard in her palms, and she turned his head up into the spray once more.

                The cold water to the face served to awaken him further and he blinked, shaking his head like a dog attempting to rid itself of water after a bath. She released his jaw at his sudden motion, instead running her hands down along his neck and across his hard shoulders to wash the suds away. Then she stepped back as he came alive, her fingers leaving him as he lifted his hands away from the walls to run over his own face.

                As she watched him, beginning to feel the cold, she reached carefully into his mind.

                He still had himself hidden behind a wall but now the wall was not fragile. His barriers were as strong as they usually were, erect and unwelcoming. She found that she was grateful for that for she had been worried earlier when he had stumbled into his quarters and fallen, practically struggling to hide himself away. Taking another step back, she watched as he turned from her, her eyes drifting down his body from behind and taking his nude form in silently.

                Even with the scars, he was striking.

                For a monster.

                Dragging her eyes away, she suddenly felt as if she intruded on him, as if she had come in unbidden while he showered and was now spying, with him none the wiser.

                Turning, she stepped out of the stall to leave. She would strip out in the living room, dress in her usual slip and wait for him to come out of the shower to see how he felt then. And if he was his usual self, she would sleep on the couch though she knew her sleep would be broken and riddled with thoughts of him.

                When had that happened? When had she begun to worry about him?

                His hand darted out as she turned, taking hold of her wrist, and she felt herself get dragged back in a moment later. Moving silently, he pulled her under the shower with one hand and released her wrist only to take hold of her by the neck instead. His palm was harsh against her collar and she went stumbling, her back colliding with the hard wall, her hands shooting to his wrist reflexively as he held her still.

                He turned his head to look down at her, dark eyes set in anger.

                She returned his fully awakened stare then, her hazel eyes wide. Somewhere between when he had entered his quarters and in this refresher stall, he had come alert, had regained himself completely. And now, clutching the wrist of the hand holding her to the wall tightly, she realized she was wary of what he could do, if he had taken offense to her actions upon his return to his rooms.

                He turned his body to face her, his pale, scarred shoulders deflecting the hard spray, his jaw tight as he stared at her. “Who did that to your face?” he asked her quietly under the fall of water, droplets running down the sharp angles of his cheeks.

                Looked like _later_ had just become _now_.

                Swallowing slightly under his palm, Rey stared back at him. “The captain,” she replied softly.

                A muscle shifted in his jaw, his lips tightening. “Why?”

                Rey’s eyes became hooded as she lifted her chin defiantly. “Because I tried to run,” she responded.

                Her answer caused him to shut his eyes tightly in thinning patience. “Rey.”

                “Ben,” she returned in the same tone, merely arching a brow when the anger seemed to come off him in hot waves under the cold spray of water. But she frowned slightly when, instead of blowing up at her, he slowly released her, his hand falling to her gray sash.

                She blinked in bewilderment as he began to untie it, unwinding it from her waist. “What are you doing?” she asked him in a whisper that she was sure he wouldn’t hear under the shower.

                With a slight exhale, he almost seemed to ignore her question. But then he murmured, “Saying thank you,” and reached for her top after tossing her sash out of the stall. Taking hold of the hem, he urged the top up over her stomach and then further over her breasts.

                For a moment she fought him, uncertain as to what was happening. He stepped away from her as she struggled to right herself, curling back and releasing her tunic. But as she hesitated in confusion, he simply stared at her, his gaze impassive, his body firm in the shower spray.

                Watching him warily, she blinked and then bowed her head away. He was still hard, she realized, and her eyes shot back to meet his dark stare, startled. If he was embarrassed by his form, however, he didn’t show it. And as he regarded her, she resolved herself and pulled her wet top off her body herself, sliding free of it and then lowering it at her side.

                He took it from her hand and tossed it out of the shower stall without shifting his gaze from hers, barely acknowledging the top as it splattered wetly on the floor. He merely waited, drawing near.

                “Take it off,” he said to her and his breath was warm below the rush of icy water, his voice running deep, husky.

                She almost didn’t wish to. The water was icy and she was already half naked. He could take it, could dismiss the temperature change but she had been stranded on a desert planet almost her entire life; she didn’t appreciate coldness the way he seemed to.

                He took another step, his hard body now flush against hers, and she shivered then for an entirely different reason. Her hands lifted, brushing his torso at his closeness, and she did as he had asked her, slowly unbinding her breasts before him.

                His eyes didn’t leave hers as she did so though his gaze seemed to darken as she released herself from the binds. Coming loose, she lowered the bindings at her side and then gingerly tossed the restraints in the direction he had flung her shirt. It landed with the same wet slap though he ignored that sound as well. Looming over her, he took one more slight step and she exhaled as she felt the heat of his skin against hers, warming her, as he pressed his entire body to hers fully and intimately. She sighed as he loomed over her, as her breasts pressed to his chest, as she felt his erection slip along her hip.

                His hand lifted, wet fingers tracing across her bruises lightly, feather soft, his thumb sliding over her bottom lip and dragging it slightly. “We’re going to take care of these,” he murmured, his voice hypnotic as her lips parted at his touch, reaching for it helplessly, “after I take care of you.”

                And his other hand lifted to the beltline of her trousers.

                She blinked at him hazily, her breath quickening, her own hands coming to hover just over his waist, itching to touch him. She suddenly felt as if she needed to hold onto something, as if he owned her entire world, and every word he spoke sent it reeling off course. As he continued to stare at her she nodded once dimly, her fingertips burning.

                He dropped his hand away from her face and then both hands took hold of her waistband to drag her pants off her hips and down her thighs, stooping to urge her legs free of them. She was left just as naked as he was in the cold shower, shivering as he rose to his full height once more.

                “Was it you?” she asked him then uncontrollably.

                She had been meaning to ask him the entire time they had been in the shower, knowing something had come between her and Snoke’s attack, even though she hadn’t been sure. Now she was almost positive and she needed to know.

                “Was it you?” she asked again, her voice straining.

                He ignored her, turning his head from her and reaching for the soap as she had earlier.

                She watched him silently, her heart pounding. She felt small, powerless, against him. He could rip her apart with a mere thought and somehow, the fact that she was naked before him proved to be another barrier ripped from her. Insult to injury, she supposed.

                He turned back to her with the bar of soap between his hands and began to lather his palms silently.

                She didn’t know what to feel then as she watched him, eyes darting between his hands and his face; fear, awkwardness, yearning. Desire. She wanted to feel _him_ again, feel him as she hadn’t been able to do so before when he had brought her to climax under his fingers in the middle of the night, days before. She wanted to run her hands over his length once more, to pull at him and run her thumb over the very tip of him, to make him feel what she had felt when he had touched her.

                If he heard her thoughts, heard her words, he gave no indication. Slipping the soap into one palm, he faced her again and reached his other hand out, his palm slipping around the nape of her neck, long fingers digging into her skin. Her eyes slid closed as he seemed to massage the muscles there, dragging soapy fingers around and then trailing down her chest and over her breast languidly.

                She fell limply against the wall of the bathroom stall once more, her lips parting under his touch.

                His face remained blank though his eyes watched his movements, watched as his fingers curled around her breast, as he trailed a thumb over the hardening nipple lightly.

                Rey sighed heavily, her body trembling against the wall, quivering under his hands.

                Then his other hand moved, ridding himself of the soap bar again before slipping low around her hip and to the very core of her.

                She twitched uncontrollably as he trailed his fingers along her center and then slid within her folds, fingertips gliding against her sensitivity. She curled, her thighs moving to close around his hand as if to trap him, to keep him exactly where he stood.

                He exhaled softly against her temple as he closed his hand around her breast, as he dragged his fingers back up along her lips below.

                He seemed to know exactly how to touch her and she found that she hated that he could read her mind, that he could pluck her weaknesses from her as easily as if he had read them from a book. Even as she squeezed her eyes shut, as she settled her head back against the wall, he ran the flat of his hand over her breast, his hard frame pressing to her quivering body.

                “It was you,” she groaned achingly and she opened her eyes to look at him for a mere moment before his fingers pulsed down below, bringing her to call out blindly, to latch onto his waist finally and squeeze. “I _know_ it was you-”

                Massaging her for another moment, he turned to the shower spray and drew his hands away, lifting them to the water, cleaning himself of the soap. She was left bereft for the moment, her breath falling heavily from her lips, her body wanting. Then he returned his hands to her body, doing the same for her, running water over her curves to wash away the soap.

                “Just tell me,” she pleaded as he worked, as he moved silently, focusing on his task. She slipped a hand up shakily along his ribs and over his chest, feeling weak and needing his hands on her again, needing some form of release. “Just _tell me-”_

                He returned to her and took hold of her wrists simultaneously, halting her trek across his body.

                She froze, her entire form becoming still as each hand was subdued.

                His face still blank, he lifted her arms, crossing her wrists over her head against the wall and clasping them both with one hand.

                She was immediately uncertain, aware that he had left her quite open to him.

                Still working silently, he reached below with his free hand and took hold of one of her thighs from the outside, wrapping long fingers around the back and pulling it to force her to stand straight.

                Her heart began to pound recklessly, her breathing accelerating in panic.

                Then he released her wrists, stepping back.

                She was on display, she thought wildly, her chest heaving, her entire body on edge as she maintained the pose he had forced on her.

                Still wordless, he merely gazed at her for a long moment, his stare burning with a heat that she didn’t know a person could possess, before he dropped to his knees before her.

                Rey stilled, utterly confused, her heart threatening to break out through her chest.

                His hands came up along her thighs, tracing their slickness as the water ran down her limbs and off her knees in rivulets. He took hold of her calves, clamping down and urging her legs apart with enough strength that she felt her stomach flip in sudden wanton desire.

                And then he leaned in, his breath warm along the inside of her thigh before his mouth opened against her, before she felt his tongue reach and lap at her core gently.

                Her knees buckled, a low distressed moan breaking from her mouth.

                His hands hardened on her legs once more, forcing her to stand straight. She dropped her arms from the hold she’d held above, instinctively slapping her palms roughly against the walls of his shower stall. As he nipped at her again she felt herself reach for purchase, for something to grasp before failing. And then she curled her hands into fists as he trailed his tongue against her once more, as his breath warmed her center, her very body. Her legs quivered as he stilled her, her chest heaving in the cold spray that was somehow no longer as cold as it had been, and she cried out again as he trailed his tongue along her lips, as he closed his mouth around the small bud at her very core.

                The sound that left her almost wasn’t human. As he sucked at her, she slammed a fist against the wall, opening the other fist to slide her palm erratically along the slick surface.

                “ _Oh-_ ”

                He came at her even harder, more ferocious, lapping at her as if he thirsted in the desert.

                She knew such thirst and not just because of Jakku, she understood dimly as her eyes fluttered open and watched the ceiling spin overhead. She convulsed, her body trembling even as heat sparked where his mouth met her lips, at his very mercy as he worshipped her below. Reaching a hand out, she felt for him blindly and found him between her thighs, called out senselessly as he licked at her. Her fingers trailed into his head of thick wet hair and latched on, tangling tightly as he brought another shiver from her, as he summoned another loud moan from her mouth.

                “Please. Please-” she called mindlessly, pulling his head to her pelvis to keep him exactly where she needed him, to fall apart under his lips. “ _Please-_ ”

                Taking hold of her hips, he dragged her tightly to his face, his tongue trailing down before pushing into her deep from below.

                Her body peaked under his mouth then, her hips pushing forward, her senses seeming to spark as she cried out, her voice ringing loudly in the quiet of his refresher and echoing.

                He held her stiff frame in his pliant hands, his fingers digging and kneading small circles into the tender skin of her thigh as she curled the other over his shoulder to hold him tightly to her. His arm slid along the thigh she had lifted, wrapping around and latching onto the leg, holding her tightly to his mouth and shoulder as he continued to lap at her. Her entire body shivered, hips bucking, trembling out of her control, and he accepted her body’s motions, his tongue still hot and wet on her lips below though his caress was gentler now, slow.

                As her erratic breathing slowed, he slid his tongue against her one last time before releasing her hips. Seemingly aware of how sensitive she was, he carefully slid her thigh from his broad shoulder back down to hold her weak frame steady. And then he rose to his feet unhurriedly, his hands trailing up her body deliciously, slipping up and over both breasts as he straightened until she was certain she couldn’t stand by herself anymore. Her hand fell away from his hair, her fingers feeling sore and cramped now that she had released him, and she slid it down his arm to his hand, holding it to her breast as she gasped faintly for breath. He was close enough to her that she felt his heat under the spray of cold water, breathed heavily and shared the same air as him as he leaned into her. He was so tall, so broad, overshadowing her, deflecting the water from her with his own wide shoulders.

                She opened her eyes weakly, blinking up at him but his own eyes had fallen shut, his mouth pressed into a tight line, his hardness slipping along her hip. Feeling him below, she lowered her gaze to his erection and immediately felt her mouth run dry.

               She would have given almost anything at that moment to return the favor to him, to drop to her knees as well and take him into her mouth, to touch him again and finally taste him. Or to have him take hold of her and have his way with her; hefted up in his arms and taken against the refresher stall or spun around and trapped against that same wall as he parted her legs from behind and pushed in deep. Almost _anything_. She was soaking wet below because of him and she knew that he would slip in easily, perfectly, with one hard thrust, could complete her and have her calling aloud again, screaming his name-

                His hand shifted quickly out from under hers, leaving her breast, a curled index finger forcing her chin up. His mouth hovered over hers as her face was raised to his but he was speaking in a soft, aching whisper, his lips moving, avoiding hers. “Easy,” he groaned faintly, painfully, his entire body rigid. “ _Easy-_ ”

                He must have picked up everything she had thought then, she realized in dawning mortification. He must have seen it all, heard it all, and suddenly she was coming back to herself, the ripples of her climax slowly falling away at last. She lowered her eyes to his mouth, blinking as humiliation rose inside of her, only to be quelled somewhat when he lifted his hand to her temple and hair, as he pressed his jaw against her other temple and cradled her head in between.

                They stood together for mere moments or small eternities, she couldn’t be sure. She only knew that she felt his heart slow with hers, felt it beat against her breast as it returned to its usual steady rhythm in their stillness and the fall of the cold water.

                Then he was rousing as if from sleep. He didn’t say anything to her; he merely ran his hands over her again as she came back to herself, the water washing away the remaining soap from her lightly trembling body. Then he shut off the water with a quick gesture, causing her to stir as the refresher fell into silence.

                Leaving her momentarily, he turned and reached out of the stall, plucking a clean towel off a metal shelf filled with them along the wall. Returning to her, he flapped it open and draped it over her suddenly cold figure. As he wrapped it around her and ran his hands along her arms roughly to warm her, she laid her head back against the cold wall to watch him hazily, measuring him in the sudden quiet.

                He worked without words, drying her a bit before reaching for another towel and drying himself. Then he urged her out of his stall and further, passing the wet clothes on the floor and ushering her out of the refresher. She stepped out shivering into his living suite, looking around and somehow not recognizing the room when she had been sitting in it a mere hour ago.

                He silently steered her out of the living room and toward his bedroom.

                Walking on weak legs, she let him move her, doing as he bid as if she were a mindless zombie.

                At his doorway, he reached out and gingerly took the towel from around her body, undressing her once more. She allowed him numbly, feeling that his bedroom was warmer than most of the other rooms in his quarters.

                He lowered his towel away as well and dropped both damp items to the floor.

                Rey looked at him uncertainly, only then beginning to regain herself. In the moonlight, he was still the man she didn’t entirely trust, the person that had spirited her away from her home. But in that moment, as he motioned for her to move to his bed, she didn’t feel as if he would hurt her, as if he would do anything she didn’t want or grant permission to. With a small frown she did as he silently instructed, heading for his bed.

                She felt him watching her, his eyes sliding down her nude body hotly before shifting back up to meet hers as she stopped beside his bed and turned to look at him over her shoulder. He nodded silently and she turned to the bed, lifting the sheet away and slowly climbing into it.

                He followed after slowly, circling his bed to the other side and then mirroring her, lifting the sheets and sliding under them from his side.

                Just as they settled together in the same bed and under the same sheet, he murmured, “It was me.”

                She curled onto her side to face him, already nodding along his pillow. How strange that they could be in one place, in the same bed together, and that she would no longer be afraid, that she could look to him as if he hadn’t done so many wrong things.

                As she settled even deeper under the sheet, sliding just that bit closer to his heat, he reached a hand out. His fingers grazed her bruised cheek lightly, his brow furrowing as he examined the marks and coloring. “We can fix this now or in the morning. I can help you through the process,” he murmured and his voice fell away as he trailed his thumb over her bottom lip once more, as he pulled it down gently.

                One of their shared dreams came back to her in that moment as he hesitated at the seam of her parted lips, as he ran his thumb along that damp line, and she reached out tentatively with her tongue, lapping at the tip.

                He exhaled at the gesture, his eyes caught to her lips, his own parting as well. She saw the desire flare in his gaze, heard his breath quicken in the silence. It was a struggle for him, she understood then, her own breath beginning to come heavily. He wanted her just as much as she did him and while she was more than willing to be taken by him then, he was fighting the entire thing. She frowned at the thought, her breath trembling around his thumb until she realized that he was waiting for an answer from her.

                “You mean…healing it,” she said to him quietly, her lips moving against his fingertip.

                He nodded, his gaze still tangled with her mouth. “Yes,” he whispered. “It is a Light Force ability and requires…patience, calm. It saps my strength now to do it.” He tilted his head along his pillow, seemingly content with staring at her lips, at his thumb playing across the lower one.

                She nodded, swallowing. “Then tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow you can show me. Not tonight. Not after…everything.”

                He considered her words, his eyes shifting upward to meet hers finally. Then he nodded, lowering his hand from her face at last.

                She left his gaze, her own eyes trailing down his face to his shoulder and chest. And when he reached out to slip an arm around her waist to urge her into his embrace, she went silently. Her hands curled up along his hard planes under her cheek, registering how smooth his skin was beyond his scars, how his heat lifted from him in the coolness of the bedroom. In that moment all she wanted was that heat, his hard angles under that smooth skin; wanted it under her cheek and breast, his solid form to shelter her as she tried to relax.

                Within mere seconds, she found that she could settle with him so close, wrapped up in his arms and hearing his breath as it eased into something akin to comfort. It was enough for her, enough to know that he was so close, enough to know that he had meant to protect her today.

                She fell asleep in his arms and found that her dreams were lovelier than they had been in a long time.

****

** Next Chapter – Chapter Twenty-Five: **

Straightening, she came close, the towel hanging from her hand alone and offering tantalizing peeks at bare skin, at tanned curves. She paused beside the bed, her head tilting the opposite direction now as she studied him. “You’re still quite pale,” she observed quietly.

He didn’t care how he looked then, his dark eyes meeting hers and holding, his arms tightening beneath his body. “Come here,” he whispered, and as her eyes became hooded in the darkness of his bedroom, he turned onto his side and reached a hand out to her.

 


	26. Chapter Twenty-Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ReyandKyloForever is going to hate me for the length of this training in the chapter, lol!!
> 
> Also thank you for all of the comments and kudos!! I love it!!

Chapter Twenty-Five:

 

                She had awoken before him.

                Stirring in the darkness, he felt the emptiness beside him in his bed and he frowned wearily for a moment, recognizing something wrong, accepting that he was alone but understanding that there was something amiss there. Then realization flashed through him, hot and cold. Snapping to a fully awakened state, he sat up, his elbows pushing into the mattress to hold his weight.

                She was still in the room.

                Blinking in confusion, he frowned as he caught sight of her to his right. He distinguished her slender form seated on the floor beside his wall-length windows, knees curled up and clasped in her arms in the very corner of his bedroom where the tall transparisteel windows met the wall at the back of his bed. She sat staring out into the night for he had lightened the opacity to allow the outside world in and vice-versa. As he turned his attention to her, he watched as her eyes flitted to the woods below where they trailed off far into the distance and then lifted to the twin moons overhead, as her brow curled up in awe as she gazed at them. She had dragged one of the discarded towels they had left at the doorway to her nude form and it did very little to cover her but it somehow made her glow in the moonlight and she was beautiful to his dazed vision, even with the darkened bruises covering half her face.

                “Rey.”

                Turning her head, she looked at him as he met her wide hazel eyes drowsily. “I’m here.”

                Nodding hazily, he lifted a hand to swipe the sleep from his eyes. “Yes, I know. Why are you there?” he asked and he knew what he actually wanted to inquire though he wasn’t sure he wished to hear her truth, would even know what to do with it.

                _Why are you still here and not trying to escape again in the middle of the night?_

                He left himself in such open positions, weakened by her so significantly, so _intricately_ , that the only reason he didn’t buckle under her was because he understood what would happen now if he were to release her and send her back to the Resistance. He depended on the strength of those consequences to continue to do what he did.

                And, damn, if it didn’t wear him out so completely.

                “I couldn’t sleep,” she murmured, bringing him away from his thoughts. She turned her head to look back out the window, her dark hair flowing loosely around her shoulders and arms as he contemplated her response.

                Because they had shared the same bed, he reflected. Had he not been so greatly enfeebled earlier, he would have stayed awake with her and they both would’ve spent the entire night next to each other merely staring at his ceiling.

                She turned back to him after a moment. “How do you feel?” she asked softly as if aware that anything louder than a whisper would be out of place in this moonlit world that they currently existed in alone; no one else invited, no one else allowed, just the two of them.

                He blinked narrowed eyes at her as he took in her question.

                What did it matter? Why did she care?

                When he didn’t respond immediately, she tilted her head at him, the moonlight casting a pale glow on the long line of her neck, throwing silver highlights along her dark hair but bringing those deep bruises out even harder in the shadows. Then she shifted, one hand clutching the towel to her breast, the other pushing her form to her feet. Straightening, she came close, the towel hanging from her hand alone and offering tantalizing peeks at bare skin, at tanned curves. She paused just beside the bed, her head tilting the opposite direction now as she studied him. “You’re still quite pale,” she observed quietly.

                He didn’t care how he looked then, his dark eyes meeting hers and holding, his arms tightening beneath his body. “Come here,” he whispered, and as her eyes became hooded in the darkness of his bedroom, he turned onto his side and reached a hand out to her.

                He wanted her back in his bed, back in his arms where he could touch her to make certain that she was real, that she existed here with him. He wanted to trace every line of her perfect body with his fingers and his mouth, wanted to finally beg entry of her and feel her writhe under him as he made her his, or watch her ride him until she consumed every bit of him, body and soul, in desire and Light.

                Clutching the towel still, she held out her free hand to take his, bending a leg onto the surface of his bed. His stare dropped momentarily to the curve of her thigh as she rested her knee on the bed, as it curled around the towel and tucked it to hide her most intimate parts away from his gaze. “Wait,” she murmured softly, her eyes falling to the surface of the bed longingly.

                She wanted whatever it was that he wished to do to her but even her thoughts were jumbled as she parted her lips to speak, to search for words to string a sentence together.

                Still holding her hand, he waited. “What is it?” he asked her quietly in the moonlit night, in the stillness of his bedroom.

                Her eyes darted up to his before returning to the bed, her mouth still shifting. “Will you…” she began hesitantly, her eyes instead moving to their clasped hands. “Will you answer my questions now? Will you…tell me about the Force Bond? And…other things I need to know?”

                His brow lifted at her question and he was stumped as to how to respond then. He wanted to tell her everything. _Everything_. He just knew some things were better left unsaid and unknown. Hidden. “I…yes, I can tell you what I know, what I _can_ , if that’s what you want.”

                “I want,” she said immediately and then drew back slightly, her fingers shifting in his hand and then carefully turning to entwine their fingers together. “I mean, I want to know.”

                But he was gone, his dusky eyes having fallen to their hands. Her skin was darker than his in her shadow, the moon at her back, and the image of their hands intertwined the way they were was unfamiliar. Unfamiliar but striking, he thought as he trailed the pad of his thumb up the side of her own hand and thumb. His lips parting, he found his eyes caught to their joined grasp for a long moment before he lifted them to her slowly.

                He wanted her then more than he had ever wanted anything in his life.

                As she returned his gaze though, he shook himself inwardly. She had asked questions of him and he scrambled to remember what they were. “The Force Bond,” he murmured distractedly, eyes falling back to their hands.

                “Yes,” she said softly.

                Nodding to straighten his thoughts out, he couldn’t help but run his thumb over her hand again, feeling the softness beneath his fingertip. “I…don’t know much of it, only what was taught to me years ago. Very few people have ever experienced it and even fewer have ever been able to distinguish it as something apart from use of the Force, apart from what a Force Sensitive can usually do. It’s always been described as this bond, this link that makes it easier to connect between two Force Sensitives.” He shrugged almost helplessly. “I believe what we have is that. It’s why it is easier for me to hear your thoughts, to read your emotions.”

                She also dropped her eyes to their hands, watching as he swept his thumb across the side of hers and licking her lips. The gesture caused his gaze to fall to her mouth, to the tip of her tongue as she ran it and broke the seam. He wanted to rise on the bed and take her face in his hands, to kiss her deeply, roughly; something that he never wanted to do with anyone because the thought of a kiss was far too intimate, too personal and private. Something only between lovers. It was not a side of himself that he was willing to show, not a weakness he would wish to broadcast. His body had already been put on display; every battle, every frontline he had taken up, slashes in his uniform, in his skin. Blood flying and dripping. He had scars all over his form. His body meant nothing. He had already allowed others to see it, to touch it, caress it, nurse it back to health. And he had come away unaffected.

                A kiss, on the other hand, that was something he would not give to anyone.

                But if it ever had to be with someone, it would be with her, he realized, and his heart pounded with the words as they raced through his head.

                His touch would hurt her due to those bruises, though, and the thought sent anger simmering within him. He would need to have a word with the Captain in the morning and he only hoped he wouldn’t have to take the same course with her as he had with Hux. If he did, by the end of this debacle, the Supreme Leader would need to rebuild the entire First Order if everyone continued to get on his bad side.

                But Rey was continuing, those pink lips pursing. “Couldn’t it just be that it’s easy for you to read my thoughts because I can’t hide them? Because I’m not strong enough or know enough about it?”

                He shook his head, still longing for her mouth. “No,” he murmured absentmindedly. “No. It’s more than that. When I…” His eyes dropped away as he realized what he needed to say to make her understand, and he shut them firmly, grimacing. The last thing he needed then, in his quiet room, in this fragile connection forming as they merely spoke with each other, was to remind her of the times he had hurt her, and only the _first_ of many times. “When I reached into your mind to get the piece of the map…to Luke Skywalker,” he said slowly, carefully, “you were not entirely easy to read. In fact, you turned it on me.” And he shushed her for a moment as she went to speak, his brow tightening. “I believe…that’s where the bond formed, actually.”

                She nodded swiftly. “I do, too,” she said, her voice lighter than air.

                Swallowing thickly, he opened his eyes though he couldn’t meet her stare just then. “I believe the Force Bond also allows us to…draw from each other, to _become_ each other. To work _through_ each other, if that makes sense.” And he finally looked at her again, searching her eyes intently.

                But her own eyes had drifted from his, were focused blindly straight ahead over his head. “It makes sense,” she stated in realization and she nodded slowly. “It explains…a lot.”

                He tilted his head. “Does it?” he asked curiously.

                “Yes,” she answered softly. “It explains the dreams, how easily you could find me. How easily I…I _went_ to you, to _heal_ you…even though I didn’t know it was you! Even across…” And she inhaled deeply, her brow lifting, her gaze distant. “Even across the galaxy,” she whispered in awe as if suddenly seeing the whole of it, _finally_ seeing everything he had always seen from the beginning for he had spent his entire life discovering the intricacies of the Force, far longer than she had. “Or how easily your thoughts come into my head even when I’m not trying. How-”

                She broke off, her jaw clamping shut before she could voice her next words.

                But he already knew and he thought her beautiful then as she saw everything he had always seen, as she came to appreciate the things he had always been overcome with. How small the galaxy became even in its vastness. “How easily you were able to overcome me on StarKiller,” he said for her, his eyes shifting from hers back to her lips as she tightened them into a line.

                She gave a hard nod. “I’d never had any sort of training, never even wielded a lightsaber, any type of sword. But it was suddenly so familiar and everything was so…so-”

                “You channeled me. You _used_ me,” he said to her quietly and he wanted to see the reaction his words had on her as he spoke them, wanting her to understand that everything he had done to her, visiting her in her dreams and falling for her, seeing her slowly fall for him even as he had fought the entire disaster-

                It had never been his intention to take advantage of her, to deceive her. Just as it had never been hers to wield him against himself so perfectly, so expertly; without his consent for he had been her enemy, when he had already been mortally wounded.

                And especially when he had never wanted to hurt her to begin with once they had forged their bond.

                As she gazed at him, her hand beginning to tremble in his, he murmured softly, “You used me to _overcome_ me.”

                Her eyes seemed to strain as he looked at her, tears gathering, her brow lifting almost painfully.

                It was exactly the reaction he had been expecting and exactly what he hadn’t wanted. Shaking his head, he trailed his thumb along her skin again before his expression softened. “It’s done, Rey. It’s in the past. What else do you need to know?”

                Blinking, she turned her eyes from him and seemed to search the room, her gaze flying all over as if searching for escape, something to focus on so that she wouldn’t have to look at him directly then. Not yet.

                He understood the feeling only too well, especially when it came to her.

                Looking uneven, unbalanced, she murmured, “T-the name. My name. Why can’t Snoke know my name?” And she moved to lift her other hand to her head before realizing that it was the only free hand she had and that it was currently occupied holding the towel to her breast. She faltered, grimacing, before finally looking at him unsteadily. “What does it mean if he knows my name?”

                He gazed at her, his breath coming evenly though he felt his heart pick up and pound, felt himself clench. “When he knows your name, he can find you easier,” he replied softly and he felt her attempt to pull her hand from his, felt the tremor go through her. He tightened his grip on her, tried to bring her back to him in the darkness of his room. “He knew who I was even before I was born, knew everything about me because of who my parents were. It made it easy for him to find me, and once my birth was announced, it was all he needed; a name, a birthplace, parentage. He knew it all and he came for me.”

                Rey looked at him as if he had physically hurt her.

                He understood the look, understood the sorrow that rose inside of her and came from her like hard waves on a beach. “He…can find you easier now if you…if you don’t stay here. If you… _do_ happen to escape one day.” And the words brought a small tilt to his mouth, the joke that Rey didn’t find humorous in the least. “He will be able to find you because-”

                “It’s not my name,” she said to him fiercely, still whispering but now becoming angry, the tears leaving her eyes. “It’s not my real name. I don’t know my parents and I’ve only ever known Jakku. I’ve never known anything else and I didn’t even know that I was a Force Sensitive until everything happened six months ago! I have nothing for him to-”

                “You don’t have to know anything about yourself,” he murmured and he trailed his thumb over hers once more, relished the feel of her skin beneath his fingers. “Just a name that you consider yours, and the search becomes almost effortless for him. All of the other details of your life will help but in the end, he can find you. He is…” He grimaced, trying to force himself to focus on her, to seek the comfort of her thoughts, of her body. “He is resourceful.”

                She stared at him. “Resourceful?” she echoed in disbelief and her face twisted, her brow drawing low, her jaw clenching. “He is a _monster_. He is-”

                She was working herself up for no reason that could be dealt with then and he pulled on her hand once more, his thumb flicking back and forth to soothe the hard expression away from her beautiful face. “Come here,” he said once more and this time there would be no argument. He wanted her back in his arms and back in his bed. Sitting up further, he reached with the other hand as well then, his fingers rounding the hand holding the towel pressed against her chest, cautiously prying at her fingers to open them. “Leave the towel on the floor. You don’t need it right now.”

                She swallowed faintly at his words, seeming to gauge him now that she was calming. But when he merely gazed at her, a dark penetrative look, she allowed his fingers to tug her hand open. The towel fell loose from her nude form and he took hold of it as it slipped, tossing it off the side of the bed. She was bathed with a silver halo though her nude body was bronze in the darkness and he exhaled as he cast his eyes over her entire figure. Reaching once more, he trailed light fingers down the expanse of smooth skin between her breasts and her belly. Her chest rose with her shallow breath, her entire figure rigid as she waited for his hand to fall lower, for him to finally demand her.

                _No. Not yet. Not until it’s right, even if it’s never right._

                Instead, his hand slipped to the side, wrapping around the curve of her waist and latching on, and he leaned low. His mouth brushed the sensitive skin of her belly, his breath warm along her cool skin as he trailed up her torso slowly.

                A soft sigh left her and she pulled her hand free of his, lifting it to clasp him by the back of the neck, her fingers digging into his hair and tangling lazily. Her other hand slipped across his shoulder, fingertips clawing into the hard muscle and bone there.

                He expelled a breath at her gesture, the tip of his tongue lapping at her skin as he raised his mouth to the valley between her breasts, as he slipped sideways to take a nipple between his teeth.

                This time she let loose a heavy cry, fingers tightening on his waves and clamping tightly.

                Exactly the perfect response he had needed.

                Wrapping his arm fully around her waist, he pushed to his knees. Hearing her breath catch as he loomed over her, he curled his other hand along the back of one of her thighs and easily hefted her up from the floor and into his chest to carry her weight. Twisting his body even as she yelped in surprise, he yanked her onto the bed and dropped her onto the gentle surface beneath his larger form, wincing slightly as she tightened her grip on his hair reflexively.

                The things pain did to him; he was almost positive she knew it and was taking advantage of the fact.

                She blinked at finding herself beneath him as he towered overhead but her surprise flitted away and became desire, her eyes slipping closed as he bent into her neck, careful of her cheek and jaw, and whispered, “I want to taste you again.”

               Nodding mindlessly, she could only follow him with her fingers as he yanked her legs open, his hand still clamped on the back of her thigh. And she let everything else slip away as he lowered himself back down her body and dipped into her slick center, as she felt his mouth envelop her hungrily.

                When she called out in the night as he brought her to climax, his real name left her lips as she clutched at him, as she sought to hold him in the fall.

                And she noticed distantly that he didn’t seem to mind the name in the moment.

 

                When he woke the next morning, she was asleep beside him still, though burrowed under the sheets. A part of him noticed dimly that she had stolen most of his sheets as well, and the thought was somehow amusing coupled with the vision of her curled up into a tight fetal position and completely swathed in numerous blankets. And then he wondered if she had been cold in the night. He had been perfectly fine, a bit too warm, and he paused to wonder if she had sensed his heat and had then debated not to seek it out, instead curling her body up beneath as many layers and sheets as had been afforded to her.

                She made his heart hurt and yearn at the same time, he realized as he gazed down at her.

                Then, as he understood his own words, he shook his head harshly, his usual glower settling across his face. Sitting up, he was still careful to extract himself from the bed sheets without stealing any from her curled up form, and he dipped on his way to the refresher to pick up the towel he had discarded the night before.

                He would leave her towel beside the bed in case she decided to revert to modesty when she awoke.

                Today was important. He would take her with him when he went to train his Knights and he needed to involve her in the process; he would need his knights to become familiar with her and her battle style, vague as it was. And he would need her to become accustomed to his knights and their battle formations, the way they worked off each other and how they operated separately. They were the Knights of Ren for a reason; she would need to learn how to work with them and vice-versa if they were to accomplish any sort of task together.

                As he showered, he felt himself become heavy with dread. Would his knights take to a new person? More so, would Rey take to them or would she fight the entire process completely? He assumed the latter, already picturing her in his head. She had fought everything he had tried to do for her since she had been escorted to this First Order base. There was no reason to believe that she would react to this new attempt with anything other than distrust and contempt. He frowned wearily as he finished up, as he stepped out of the refresher stall and pulled a towel to dry himself. On top of it all, she had wounded two of his knights in their attempt to take her from the Resistance base that day. Would they take to her, knowing that the person they had been tasked to retrieve had been, and still technically was, their enemy?

                They had left his uniform strewn haphazardly all over the refresher floor when he had returned to his quarters weakened. He stared at his clothes now as they littered the floor, at her still-damp garments tossed beside his.

                How perfect they looked scattered around each other, he marveled. And how silly to think that articles of clothing could hold such weight.

                She had cared for him even when he hadn’t deserved it, he reflected silently, his dark eyes falling across his clothes and along the toilet and sink, the stall as he glanced at it. She had done this for him and he hadn’t known how to repay her when he had finally surfaced from the deep waters of blackness.

                Ignoring his clothes, he stepped from the refresher into his main living suite, feeling the steam slip out behind his form as he left the door open. Crossing his living suite, he passed through the doorway into his bedroom.

                Rey slept on, her form curled up under the numerous blankets still.

                Hesitating close to the bed, he merely passed his eyes over her figure hidden under the sheets, cocking his head. He couldn’t read her as well as he needed to, didn’t know what went through her mind half of the time. He couldn’t even be sure she still actually hated him, though he knew she was still resistant to his views. Frowning, he took another tentative step, bringing himself directly beside the bed.

                No. He would leave her for now. He could only hunger for her so much.

                Taking the same step back, he instead turned and waved his hand to the wall opposite the transparisteel windows, waiting as the latch came loose to reveal his closet of clothes and uniforms.

                Rey shifted slightly under the sheets at the hiss of the opening latch but then settled into stillness once more.

                Turning and walking to the closet, he leaned in to retrieve an additional set of clothes for Rey that he had requested earlier, pulling them out and setting them aside on the side seat in the corner of the room. Then he turned back to the closet to select his own clothes. He wouldn’t need the cowl and wrap as he did not expect to leave the premises. But he would need the rest of his uniform as he would be addressing his knights later in the day. He pulled out the layers of clothing and then waved his hand to seal the closet back up.

                Rey slept on.

                He hesitated once more and then shrugged inwardly. She had already seen him naked. Modesty was lost on him, had always been a fleeting thought once he had recognized the value of his body, which had been negligible in the end, sadly. Unwrapping the towel, he tossed it aside and turned, looking toward the rising sun through his windows.

                He loved the sun, he reflected. As a boy, when his parents had bickered and argued, when they had withdrawn to their own ways, he had left home to run out into the meadows and woods behind their home and he had disappeared for hours to lay down in the sunlight, to allow it to carry his thoughts away blissfully. He had slept under that sun, had _dreamed_ under that sun.

                Had been lured away under that sun, turning it black in his dreams and memories, soiling them. Staining them.

                Reaching out, he pulled forth a pair of trousers and dressed, yanking them up his legs onto his hips, gazing out toward the sun and the woods as he did so.

                She seemed to love the sun as well though it had been merciless to her on Jakku. Her very skin displayed the amount of rays she had taken in, the freckles on her face the secondary piece of evidence. Glancing back toward the bed, he hesitated before finally rounding the corner to come and stand where she had stood mere hours before clad in a towel and moonlight.

                She had been as beautiful then as she was now.

                Seating himself cautiously beside her wrapped form, he reached a hand out and rested it on the curve of what could only be her shoulder.

                She stirred with the heaviness of his palm, her form shifting, a soft sigh slipping out of the person hidden beneath.

                He merely waited, his hand pressed to her shoulder.

                A moment later, she moved once more, turning her head and legs in the cocoon she had fashioned around herself, strands of dark hair edging out from under the tip of the blanket.

                He felt the corner of his mouth curl up slightly and he moved his hand from her shoulder to her hair, fingers slipping through the locks before he remembered himself. Then he straightened and pulled his hand away, laying it down at his side as he waited for her.

                Rey emerged from under the covers seconds later, sleepy eyes blinking irritably in the sunlight, the rest of her face still covered by the blanket. “No,” she stated defiantly though it came out muffled, and she went to roll over to put her back to the sun and return to sleep.

                He immediately reached out, clasping her arm and stopping the roll. “No more sleeping,” he said, urging her onto her back once more. “It’s time to wake up. I need to train you today.”

                With a huff, she allowed him to pull her back around. “Train?” she asked from under the blanket, half her face still covered and drowsy light eyes a stunning hazel in the sun. “Train me on what?”

                He turned away before he could be distracted by her loveliness, by her eyes that seemed to see deep into his soul. “You’ll see,” he stated, his voice back to its usual timbre, his words direct and rigid. “Get up. Use the refresher. I’ve set clothes aside for you. I will wait for you to dress.” And unwilling to get drawn back into her, he rose from the bed, took up the rest of his uniform and strode out of the room to finish dressing in the main suite, leaving her behind to sit up with an expression of mild confusion on her face.

 

                He had needed a walk in the time it had taken her to get ready. Upon returning to his residence, he found her finishing up, tying her hair into the triple bun that she usually wore. Entering his quarters, he looked at her clearly for the first time in a while and he hesitated.

                She was a mix between the scavenger girl he had met six months before and a woman that he did not yet know, tall and slender form dressed in black and gray, colors that he did not recognize on her lean figure.

                She turned as he entered, looking toward him as she tied up the last lock of hair. “I’m finishing up,” she said to him and her hands dropped to smooth her tunic down as she straightened, shifting her jaw distractedly.

                He had promised her that he would work with her on wielding the Force to heal, a Light ability. But they didn’t have the time at the moment; he had already called his knights together in the second training area. 

                As she looked at him once more, he merely nodded wordlessly behind his mask. They would work on the healing after the training then.

                She bowed her head tentatively. “Where…um, where are we going? What will you be training me on?” she inquired awkwardly, her eyes shifting to the floor.

                He didn’t bother responding to her questions. “Come,” he instructed instead and he stood aside, motioning for her to pass ahead and lead him out of his quarters.

                Frowning, she did as he gestured though he registered the slight shifting of anger deep within. She stepped out into the gray sterile corridor as he waved at the console to open the way for her. Pausing outside his rooms, she turned to look at him. “I don’t know where I’m going,” she murmured to him hesitantly, uncomfortably.

                He found it somehow endearing that she would be uneasy around him when he had spent a fair amount of the night with his head buried between her thighs. Stepping from his quarters, he merely motioned for her to follow him as he turned to his left and began to stride down the corridor. He heard her scramble to catch up, light quick steps and then silence as she fell into her usual gait and followed behind.

                They took the lift down several levels, coming out into the training areas of the base.

                Passing by a certain room, he didn’t turn his attention to the training area though he felt her stumble slightly as she recognized the room through the open door, taking in the wide mat on the floor. Keeping his head straight and held high, he nonetheless reached backward with his thoughts lightly, slight tendrils reaching toward her.

                She was an absolute brick wall which made him chuckle inwardly. Best not to be reminded of that then, though it had been a rather pleasant experience, climaxing between her legs as she had peaked above.

                Rounding the corner, he led her to the doors at the end of the hall and slowed, turning to wait for her to catch up.

                She met him within moments, pausing beside him and raising her head to look at the tall entryway.

                He knew what she thought and felt in that moment; the height and width of the doors were eerily reminiscent of the Supreme Leader’s holo-conference room. He stepped between her and the doors, turning his head to the console and hearing her exhale shakily behind him as he waved his hand at it, his tall form a distraction.

                The doors slid open to display a large hangar type of room.

                His knights were already in attendance.

                A small curse slid from her behind him, hitching on a breath as she caught sight of the Knights of Ren waiting within. “Ben,” she murmured uncertainly.

                He didn’t acknowledge her as he strode into the room, moving to meet the knights. Upon reaching them, he stopped and turned to look toward her where she still hovered in the doorway. “Rey. Come.”

                It took her a moment to get her legs working but then she was entering cautiously, crossing the wide expanse of the room to come up beside him.

                The six knights were scattered throughout the large compartment but as she neared, they all drew together, some ambling, some storming.

                Rey was immediately on guard, wide eyes gauging the knights as they congregated, as one tilted his head at her behind his heavy metal helmet, another peering out eerily from a mask that resembled a skeleton, his head shrouded in a heavy hood.

                “No weapons,” Kylo Ren ordered and he looked toward one with a long staff.

                The knight with the staff lifted his helmeted head for a moment as if to defy him but as Kylo Ren tilted his own masked face at him, the knight turned and tossed the weapon aside, the staff clattering in the silence of the large room as it hit the floor and bounced away. It wasn’t the proper way to set a weapon aside but Rey felt in that moment that it was more of a jab at the Master of the Knights than anything else.

                He seemed to recognize the same thing but he remained silent, his masked face cocking soundlessly. His thoughts were shrouded in darkness and stillness, and Rey found no answers there in that moment. She looked toward him, coming awake from her search uncertainly. She remembered these six quite well from the Resistance base cells and she was not happy to see them much less face off with them again. It seemed the feeling was mutual with the knights, enough that the discontent was also directed to their Master.

                He kept his head turned away from her sharp stare, motioning to the knights. “Fall into formation,” he commanded as he moved away from Rey.

                She watched him distance himself warily before turning her eyes to the knights.

                The six of them shifted as a group, two coming forward and the others falling behind them into a tight configuration.

                Rey looked back toward Kylo Ren again guardedly, wishing in that moment to ask him what was expected of her, what was to come. But the chance was gone a second later as the two knights leading the group suddenly moved toward her. She scampered backward, a slight squeak leaving her lips as she avoided the swipe of one fist, as she ducked around another and retreated.

                “What in the-” she growled at the Master of the Knights, her brow drawing low as she straightened, her hands clenching into fists. “What kind of training-”

                One in the second line of knights swept through toward her and this time his attack connected, his armored fist catching her in the face.

                Right into the bruises she already had on that side.

                The attack knocked her clear off her feet, her legs giving way as she felt agony overwhelm her completely, an old throbbing and a new pain. She toppled to the hard floor, crashing so roughly that her breath was stripped from her as she landed. Fire streaked up the side of her face, her jaw falling numb, and she felt a breath hiss out of her as she curled in, her arms coiling around her head in an attempt to somehow contain the pain.

                Someone stepped close to her, bringing her to twist in even tighter, her hands and arms moving to protect her head. But nothing more came, no further attacks, and she blinked in the shadows of her curled arms momentarily before carefully peering out.

                Kylo Ren stood over her, his uniform falling heavily around his legs and brushing her hands as she loosened them from her head. He seemed so tall from the floor and she was sure that his dark clothes only contributed to the image.

                “This is a training,” he stated to the knights, his voice hard under his mask. “This is not a vendetta.”

                There was a current of tension, of animosity, in the room and running through the group of knights as they backed away from the Master of the Knights.

                Shifting her jaw and feeling only numbness from it but fire from her cheek, Rey carefully uncurled. Her heart was pounding and she felt the stirrings of anger beneath the uncertainty of facing off against the knights, of not understanding the rules of this fight. Grimacing, she rose from the floor onto an elbow warily, needing another moment to compose herself just that little bit more.

                Kylo Ren motioned for her to rise and she did so after a breath, reaching for confidence, for strength. It was fleeting though and she swallowed shallowly as she looked to the group of nights waiting on her hostilely. She tossed Kylo Ren a look loaded with meaning

                _They’re going to kill me._

                Seeming to hear her, he turned, his helmeted head inclining toward her. “They will not,” he said to her in a quietly mechanical tone. “You’ve accessed me once before in a fight against my knights. You’ve also accessed me on StarKiller base. Attempt the same now.”

                She frowned at him, her cheeks drawing upward though the gesture caused her to wince as her bruises pulled. “What?” she asked almost inaudibly, confusion spreading across her face.

                Turning now to face her directly, he lowered his head to murmur to her. “The Force Bond we share. You tapped into me, into my skills, before. You did it on StarKiller and you did it in the cells of your Resistance base,” he said to her in a deep tone, his voice falling low so that only she could hear. “Do the same now. You will access my skills, my knowledge of my knights. My experience. Do it. I will not stop them a second time.”

                And with that he turned from her in a fluid movement, striding away and motioning to his knights almost dismissively.

                She was left staring after him, her jaw falling open. “Wait, but I-” And she spun around as the knights fell back into formation before her, two in front and four hovering in the second line.

                Backing away, she felt herself draw in for a moment in panic. She had spent her entire life on Jakku worrying about no one but herself; she had been in her fair share of fights and scrapes but this was something else entirely. She felt the animosity, the _skill_ , from this group and it was menacing, more so than she was used to. She’d been used to other scavengers, to thieves and criminals on Jakku. She was not used to fighting a group like this. She retreated further as the knights advanced as one, as they began to spread out with every step toward her.

                They were trying to surround her and flank her, she realized rapidly, and she watched them circle around her but couldn’t find a way to stop them. Even as she stepped toward one with what she hoped was a threatening advance, another still slipped further behind her, causing her to withdraw.

                She needed that staff, the one that had been discarded. She looked toward it, a quick glance, before one of the knights broke formation and came at her. Recoiling, she sidestepped his attack and barely dodged another strike directly behind her as she backed into another of the knights. Covering her head, she scrambled away as they came at her, as they converged once more.

                And in that moment of panic, she felt herself fall away even as she withdrew.

                The world suddenly came into focus so clearly that it almost hurt her senses. All of her was affected; her eyes became fixated so intently that they strained. Her hearing dwindled to a high-pitched shriek that caused her to grimace. Even her sense of smell stung her nostrils.

                But she straightened still, her body threatening to curl up in overload against her will. Moving instinctively, she stepped away as one of the knights lunged at her with a full-bodied attack, easily evading him and then throwing her hand out blindly toward the far wall of the room.

                The cast off staff slid and trembled for a moment along the floor before suddenly leaping up and flying across the wide expanse of space. It cracked off one of the knights’ heads with a hard clang in mid-flight, causing him to lurch sideways and bringing her a small measure of delight. A second later, the staff smacked into her palm roughly and she didn’t waste a moment to wrap her fingers around it and utilize the weapon, immediately swinging it widely and catching another knight off the side of his helmet, effectively jarring him. The knight stumbled backward as she swung the staff around her frame, feeling its length and weight in her hands and acclimating herself to it almost instantly, comfortably.

                She knew this type of weapon. She had trained herself with this type of weapon her entire life.

                But it was more than just having knowledge of staff use. It was the Force; she felt it deep within, understood it so clearly that it made her head ache and her perceptions widen even more. She could see the knights’ formation then; saw what their goal was, recognized their movements and attacks now.

                And she cast a glance at Kylo Ren, a look that was both slow and quick as the world struggled to catch up to her senses.

                He was still, his frame rigid. But he was entranced at the same time, his entire form suspended.

                Turning her attention back around, Rey swung the staff at an incoming knight and then spun, twirling the staff in a wide arc. This was not one of her attacks, she understood dimly as she followed through, as the end of the staff caught one of the knights just beneath the chin and sent his head snapping back. Even as she spun, she found herself whirling again, the staff following her fluidly and swiping upward in another arc. Another knight, the original owner, retreated as he threw a hand up to deflect her swing.

                This was not her normal fighting style, if she even had one, she realized. This was not her at all. This was-

                And she finished the swing and twirled it in her hands, settling into a defensive stance before the struggling knights, turning to toss Kylo Ren a glare as they attempted to regroup.

                This was _his_ style. And as she stared at him she felt the pride rolling off of his tall dark form, could almost see the ominous smile on his face below the helmet. This was what he wanted, what he had tried to get out of her and he had succeeded. The only problem was that she wasn’t sure she approved of his methods.

                This was a _‘throw your child into the deep end and force him to swim’_ technique and she did not appreciate being pushed in that manner.

                Luke would never have pushed her in this way.

                He turned his helmeted head toward her in a hard snap and she straightened, ready to fight with him, already knowing that he had picked the thought straight from her head for she had practically yelled it at him. And he was preparing to shout as well, she saw it then. _Heard_ it. The thoughts sped through his head furiously, building with rage. Luke had been weak. Luke had never understood the power of the Dark Side. Luke had virtually cut half of himself and his abilities off in denying the Dark. Rey would never accomplish true power by denying a side herself. He was itching to toss it at her, to shout it.

                But a shout of a different kind cut the air.

                _“Kylo Ren!”_

                The Master of the Knights of Ren swung around on the knight that had hurled his name, Rey forgotten. Silence fell over the training area for a long, painful moment as everyone stilled.

                “Did you refer to me by name?” Kylo Ren questioned and the fury was gone though anger still darkened his mechanical voice. Every time he had spoken from that mask, it had been in a deep, low tone. This was no different, his voice sliding out smoothly, softly, almost stoically.

                But Rey felt the rage within him. She recoiled, blinking rapidly as he suddenly stormed across the floor to the knight that had summoned him, his hands clenching into fists.

                One of the other knights, the one that had originally held the staff, stepped into his path fluidly, separating Kylo Ren from the knight that had shouted his name.

                Kylo Ren merely waved a hand on his way to the offending knight distractedly.

                The one that had come between them was tossed aside as if he weighed no more than a feather, his armored form suddenly batted aside. He flew and crashed to the floor with a loud clank, his body rolling.

                Rey felt her heart jump into her throat as she looked toward the fallen knight, her earlier widening of senses dwindling away until it was just her standing in the center of the room clutching an unfamiliar staff in her damp palm.

                Kylo Ren stalked toward the knight that had yelled his name aloud and he lifted his hand before his masked face, his fingers clawing into talons.

                The knight, the one with the heavy metal helmet, let out a gurgle as his body was seized by an invisible force, his head falling back.

                Rey froze as she watched the knight lift slowly off the floor, feet dangling limply. Kylo Ren bowed his head, his fingers coiling in purposely and the knight wheezed, his body constricting under the Force grip.

                “Stop,” Rey uttered and she streaked forward a second later, reaching out and taking hold of Kylo Ren’s arm roughly, yanking him. “ _Stop_ -“

                The Master of the Knights of Ren spun toward her, his clawed hand falling aside and forgotten as he turned his attention to her, his tall form darting into hers as if she had attacked him as well.

                The knight toppled to the floor with a hard thump, wheezing in the stillness.

                Rey stumbled back a step, suddenly face to face with the black and chrome helmet that was Kylo Ren. Breathing harshly, her heart beating in her chest, she could only stare into that mask and remember the first time she had encountered him and how she had feared him. Her hands tightened around the staff tremulously, feeling the weight and width and finding comfort in it, strength. “Stop,” she whispered to him, her wide eyes searching his metal face, her pulse pounding so loudly she was sure it echoed in the suddenly silent room. “Stop.”

                He merely seemed to stare at her from behind his mask and she felt the turmoil of his emotions, his thoughts; anger that he had been challenged and addressed out of rank. Fury that another of his knights had stepped into his path and had forced him to deal with him as he had. And then rage that he had been more than willing to kill one of his own knights only to be stopped by the woman that currently seemed to rule him. Her presence and her thoughts distracted him, blinded him, and he detested it as he considered it a weakness before his knights.

                But Rey could only stare at him, her breathing shallow and rapid.

                Growling low and deep, the sound reverberating from under his mask, he tilted his head toward the Knights of Ren. “That’s enough for today. Go,” he growled, his shoulders rising and falling wildly.

                They didn’t waste a second, the knights rising and moving, two stopping to help the one that had shouted his name in the room, the other two latching onto the knight Kylo Ren had flung aside. Together, they regrouped and left the room, the doors opening and swishing closed quietly behind them.

                Swallowing warily, Rey could only stare at him as he continued to stand ominously over her.

                As silence fell in the training room once more, they were left merely facing each other. His breathing was heavy even through the helmet and it was her opposite; weighty as hers was light and rapid.

                And then he hissed, “I’m putting you back in your cell.”

                Rey blinked at him in confusion. “You’re _what_?” she demanded. Anger flared through her a moment later as he abruptly took hold of her arm and knocked the staff clear out of her grip. The weapon clattered to the floor and rolled away, already forgotten as he turned to walk, dragging her form along. Recoiling, and then struggling, she let out a furious shout, her entire body flailing behind. “What are you _doing-_ ”

                “I am putting you back in your cell. I don’t wish to see you or hear you for the rest of the day,” he growled at her, pulling her along.

                _“No!”_ she shouted at him and she lashed out, ramming her fist into his shoulder and his arm, even connecting with the edge of his helmet as she yanked at her arm in his tight grip. The attack didn’t seem to faze him for it didn’t even slow him down. “No! You don’t get to just shut me away when you are angry with me, when you disagree with me-”

                “Rey,” he rasped, whirling on her and dragging her close to his side with a hard yank. “You’re going into the cell. You can fight me but you won’t win. So you either walk or I carry you there,” he stated, his black helmet almost pressing into her face.

                Fighting the anger inside, she nonetheless gave her arm a good, hard pull just to be insolent. He didn’t release her; in fact, he barely shifted.

                Exhaling in a whoosh, she finally settled. “Fine. I will walk,” she said and she pulled at her arm again, now raising a glare when he held on with his vise-like grip. Nearing, she stood tall before him, unwilling to back down. “Let go of me,” she ordered him quietly, her fury resonating in her tone and words.

                After a moment of tense silence, he did as she asked, flexing his fingers upon release and straightening away.

                Grimacing slightly, Rey shrugged her arm out, her glare still fixed on him. “Lead the way, Kylo Ren,” she stated, now aware how he seemed to hate being addressed by his name by one he considered an inferior.

                But she was not an inferior and she would not allow him to see her that way. She had been trapped in this base long enough to appreciate how things worked but not for one moment would she allow him to view her as anything less than his equal. He was her captor and a murderer; she would be damned before she followed in Han’s footsteps at the hands of his only child.

                For all she knew, he had read every thought straight from her head for he loomed over her, large dark form a shadow in the bright room.

                She merely returned what she assumed was his glare.

                Without another word, he spun away from her and strode off, waving his hand at the console beside the doors. They doors slid open, allowing him to exit and he vanished outside of them, storming down the hallway.

                With a sigh she finally followed, her steps slow and deliberate. He could be angry with her now but she knew better than to think that she had any chance of escape at the moment. Her face still held the reminder of what happened when she attempted it.

                And with the thought, she bowed her head and traced his steps, catching up with him at the lift.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Twenty-Six: **

Keeping Rey here was becoming increasingly dangerous. His knights hadn’t been particularly thrilled with her from the start when she had fought them in the cell levels of her Resistance base. With this latest training incident, he was sure he was beginning to lose their trust. It wasn’t something he could afford and now that Hux was consistently sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, he was being forced to walk on eggshells within his own base. His hands clenched into fists at his sides as he approached the pedestal and just as he came to a stop at the foot of the dais, a pale blue light trickled from above, slowly lighting the platform.


	27. Chapter Twenty-Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very short chapter, no smut unfortunately. But I needed this chapter to move things along and set stuff up for future chapters.
> 
> If you guys get a chance, hop over to my profile for links to the playlists! I only have Book One and Two up on my profile since we're only on Book II in the fic and we haven't gotten to Book III (although I do have Book III for BDaT up on 8tracks, you just gotta search for it under TasogareBan). I honestly think you guys would like the song choices and playlists, but 8tracks has the story bits to show exactly where the songs fit. I'm going to have to agree with The AlchemistsDaughter about pouring one out for 8tracks but originally, the site used to be awesome because I could put down the lines of fic and the verses of the song that made the scene for me in my head (which is SUPER HUGE for me; I am a singer/writer/comic book and manga artist, and I see way too many things in my head). So please check them out on 8tracks or check out my spotify playlists for the Books. 
> 
> Also, thank you guys for the comments and kudos, I adore them all the time and always. This fandom is ridiculously amazing and I LOVE that so many people have hopped on the bandwagon. OG Reylos should be super happy that they could see it coming and that they were so unbelievably kind when antis were so mean to them, so welcome to the fandom and have a grand old time!
> 
> I probably won't post again until like Christmas Day or Eve so if I don't get to you guys before then, HAPPY HOLIDAYS and God bless!! Thank you all for being just awesomely amazing people!!

Chapter Twenty-Six:

 

                “Ren.”

                The title was spoken distastefully, as if addressing one that didn’t merit even staining the bottom of a boot.

                Kylo Ren slowed to a stop in the dark corridor and turned his head to the offending man that had called to him. There had been no way to mistake the voice, however, so when he lifted his black mask to the red-haired General, he was already beginning to boil.

                “General,” he returned, still following professionalism though his voice left no confusion as to how he regarded the man.

                Hux came from the corridor the knight had just stormed past, one that led to the only lift in the compound that accessed the control rooms of the base. “I have been looking for you,” the General stated coolly, hands meeting behind his back as he came to meet with the knight, long great coat falling heavily around his tall form.

                He was taller than the General, Kylo Ren reflected almost distractedly. Standing and lifting his chin before the knight would not give him any sort of advantage. “I have not been looking for you,” the knight returned stonily and he made to move once more. He had been on his way to retrieve Rey for her daily bath and he was sure that current aura of brimming anger was her, glowing brilliantly in the corners of the soothing darkness that was his mind. He had kept her trapped in her cell for over a week now, avoiding her entirely unless he needed to escort her to his quarters to use the refresher and to change. She was sapping his patience even as he tried to siphon it from her.

                Though Hux was definitely giving her a run for the money as he began to walk beside him.

                “Did you require something?” the knight inquired testily, his tone vaguely innocent and soft as the General kept pace with his aggressive stride.

                Straightening, his chest puffing out just a bit, Hux’s pinched lips parted to speak. “The Supreme Leader has asked for you,” he said in his rigid, accented tone.             

                Kylo Ren cocked his head at the General, his brow furrowing under his helmet at the redhead’s words. He hadn’t felt the Supreme Leader in his thoughts and there had been no direct communication from him. Turning his head away as he stormed, he was reminded of Rey. “I will be in the communications room in a moment.”

                This time it was the General’s turn to feign innocence. “You are going to leave him waiting?” he asked curiously and he suddenly stopped, forcing Kylo Ren to halt as well.

                Clenching his jaw, the knight felt his entire body become stiff, his gloved hand itching to claw around the General’s neck and squeeze. He’d already threatened the General once, _more_ than once. He had even taken Phasma to task and she’d had more sense than Hux, immediately expressing regret for the lengths she’d had to go to subdue Rey. Pretty words, though he knew she hadn’t meant them. At least she’d maintained decorum which, in turn, had stopped him from outright executing her.

                Rey waited for him still.

                Without wishing to waste anymore breath on the General, the knight turned away and stalked down the corridor, moving toward the lift. Once he deposited Rey in his quarters for her to bathe, he would report to the Supreme Leader. And then he would return to escort the Force Sensitive back to her cell.

                Having her in the compound was becoming harder and harder to manage and he realized it yet again as he boarded the lift, turning to face outward and catching a last glimpse of the General where he stood still before he also turned and strode off back the way he had come.

                And Hux was becoming a problem that he could no longer afford to avoid.

 

                Rey looked positively bored when he arrived at her cell door. Arching a brow at him, she sat up on her metal slab of a bed as his tall form filled the doorway. “To what do I owe this visit?” she asked triflingly, tilting her head at him.

                He didn’t have the patience, not unless he attempted to drain it from her again, and from the looks of it she had very little tolerance in the reserve today. She would not carry the both of them which meant he would need to work some of it up himself.

                What a pain.

                “I’ve come to escort you to my quarters to use the refresher,” he said to her.

                She lifted her head and nodded. “Ah,” she murmured lightly. “Another hour in which you can bear to look and listen to me,” she sighed with a hint of disdain.

                He was regretting coming to the cell at all. “ _Now_ , Rey,” he commanded. “If you wish to stay here like a petulant child, I will leave you here. You and I both know patience is not my forte.”

                She tossed him a wry look as if he had cracked a joke. “Of course we do,” she stated with a mirthless snort. “Just as we both know you sap every little thing you can from me when you see _fit_.” And the word came out dark and laced with anger.

                He had no time for this. The Supreme Leader would not be kept waiting for long. “Another day, then,” he tossed at her in his low mechanical tone and he moved to leave, already lifting his hand toward the console on the outside of her prison.

                “Wait!” her voice rang out, piercing the air and causing him to halt in mid-hand wave. “Wait.”

                Turning back around to face the cell, he did as she asked.

                “I’m coming with you,” she said, sounding irritated with her decision. “I need to bathe. I’m coming.”

                He knocked down the arrogance that threatened to leak out of him. “Then come,” he ordered her crossly. “I have an appointment that I intend to keep even if I am now to be late for it.”

                Casting a glare at him that he would rush her, she rose from the metal slab and exited the cell, pausing beside him. “Then let’s go. Can’t keep your Supreme Leader waiting,” she said acerbically.

                How she knew it was a meeting with the Supreme Leader was beyond him but he didn’t care to ask her then. He was already late as it was.

                Turning and motioning to the console, he didn’t wait for the door to swish closed before he turned and moved back toward the lift, Rey following behind.

 

                Dropping Rey off at his quarters, Kylo Ren promptly left, heading to the large holo-chamber that the Supreme Leader used to communicate with the general and the knight. Entering the dark room, he was not surprised to find it empty. This was not the first time the Supreme Leader had left him waiting and he was certain it would not be the last. Crossing down the long corridor to the pedestal, he felt heaviness drag at him, his brow slowly drawing low over his dark eyes.

                Keeping Rey here was becoming increasingly dangerous. His knights hadn’t been particularly thrilled with her from the start when she had fought them in the cell levels of her Resistance base. With this latest training incident, he was sure he was beginning to lose their trust. It wasn’t something he could afford and now that Hux was consistently sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, he was being forced to walk on eggshells within his own base. His hands clenched into fists at his sides as he approached the pedestal and just as he came to a stop at the foot of the dais, a pale blue light trickled from above, slowly lighting the platform.

                Right on time, he thought sardonically.

                The image of the Supreme Leader appeared in hologram form, shimmering before him, seated as usual.

                He lifted his head, his brow clearing as he schooled his expression into blankness. And in that moment, looking up at the withered form of a scarred and disfigured old man, he suddenly felt as if the Supreme Leader wasn’t quite as large, quite as formidable. He frowned faintly at the thought as it flashed through his head, blinking rapidly at the hologram before him.

                But then the creature on the throne lowered his head to cast eyes on him and he straightened, lifting his chin.

                “I have heard…alarming concerns from the General,” the Supreme Leader growled down at him, clawed fingers slowly wrapping around the armrests of his throne.

                Ren felt his expression wither slightly. “I see,” he responded quietly. “Such as, if I may inquire?”

                Snoke leaned forward carefully, bending down to the knight. “Concerns that my apprentice has fallen for the girl that he was sent to eliminate,” he replied in a hiss.

                He exhaled shortly. He was going to kill Hux, well and truly, and he would not bother to make it look like an accident. “Those are rumors and they are greatly exaggerated,” Ren stated. “I have done nothing but what I have said I would. She is coming along in her trainings and has already shown improvement.”

                A small sound came from the hologram, slipping from the creature. “And has she abandoned the Light?” the Supreme Leader queried in a growl.

                Ren hesitated. “With more time, she will fully embrace the Dark,” he answered carefully. “And with your guidance and mine, she will be exceptional.”

                The Supreme Leader seemed to appreciate his response for he leaned back once more, his long fingers loosening on his throne. “Then continue with her training.”

                “I will,” Ren said and waited, expecting the conversation to be done with.

                He was mistaken. “In the meantime, you are to accompany the Captain,” the Supreme Leader commanded.

                Ren stiffened. “Accompany the Captain?” he asked warily. And after he had debated killing her. The day could only get better after this, he assumed wryly.

                “The First Order has received intel concerning the location of the latest Resistance base now that they have abandoned Takodana,” the Supreme Leader replied raspingly, slowly in his usual cadence. “What better way to train your apprentice than to show her that her Master himself has cut the ties to her past?” he stated coldly. “Sever the connection…and extinguish her Light.”

                Blinking, Ren could only partly compose himself before nodding. “As you wish,” he said quietly.

                And it was only then that the Supreme Leader dimmed from view, his holographic figure slipping away into nothingness.

                He stood there for a long while still, the dark room suddenly cavernous and eerie. He thought he would have more time even as Hux continued to make everything difficult. Now he realized just how little he had of it.

                Turning around, he strode down the long path to the doors. He would gather the information he needed from the Captain. By then, Rey should be done bathing and he would escort her back to her cell. He had much work ahead of him tonight and he was in no mood to have another person hanging on him as he did what needed to be done.

                Or that had been the plan until he reached his quarters and found her asleep in her small slip on the couch, wet-haired and smelling of his cleansers. Pausing beside her sleeping form, he merely watched her doze and changed his mind.

                At least she wouldn’t be a bother.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Twenty-Seven: **

Rey stared for another long moment still, her fingers suddenly beginning to tremble as she understood only then what had just happened. And with adrenaline suddenly beginning to push through her body, she whirled around and ran.

 


	28. Chapter Twenty-Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays, everyone! Sorry for the delay but it's been a busy weekend so far and I'm actually about to be late for work so I'll answer comments real quick and then run out. Enjoy the chapter! No smut, unfortunately, but it's coming up soon, lol!

Chapter Twenty-Seven:

 

                He had been up early and had left her to sleep in his quarters overnight. When she’d first been awoken by his light footsteps throughout his rooms, she had shifted, blinked drowsy eyes up at him as he’d passed by and then returned to sleep when he had made no move to toss her back into her cell. But he had been active throughout the night, bringing her to stir a few times before he had finally settled to sleep himself. The sun had come up in the hours between when she had awoken last and now. She grimaced slightly against the couch cushions, blinking as she lifted her head slightly toward the bedroom. She could have continued to sleep in the darkness of the main living suite but the sunlight beckoned and all she wanted then was to feel it on her face in the quiet. Days had come and gone since she had last seen the sun and she wanted to see it today.

                Ren had left the opacity clear in the transparisteel windows and the sunlight coming in would feel heavenly on her face. Pushing the sheets aside, she sat up and then rose to her feet, tiptoeing toward the bedroom. She didn’t expect the knight to still be in the suite and as she appeared at the doorway, she was not surprised to find the room empty, the sheets strewn aside haphazardly.

                She hesitated at the door, casting a long look at his bed. His blankets were rumpled and messy, as if he had shifted uneasily throughout the small amount of sleep he had gotten. Tilting her head, she moved toward the bed slowly, glancing over her shoulder toward the front doorway and listening for him in case he was to return.

                Pausing beside the bed, she bent, lifting a knee to it and lowering her hands onto the surface. It was cold; he had been gone for a while now. Lowering herself to the bed, she stretched out on her side and tentatively pressed her face to his pillow.

                His scent rose from it; the soap he had in his refresher stall, the hair washes. His scent of woods and musk. She inhaled deeply, her eyes fluttering shut, and for a long spell she allowed it to carry her away to her dreams, to her memories of him.

                Memories of him when she wasn’t angry with him and he wasn’t acting like a complete ass.

                Sighing, she let herself breathe his scent in once more before rising from the bed and looking toward the windows. The room was as warm from the sun as she had suspected. Standing, she strode forward, stepping into the slants of light and breathing in deeply, a smile immediately curling her lips. She still had no idea where this base was located but the wood outside the window was wonderfully green in the sun, the sky a brilliant blue overhead. If she tried just the smallest bit, she was sure she could almost smell the heavenly scent of the trees, the morning dew wet on her fingertips if she could just open her mind wide, far.

                Down below, just to the left where the landing strips waited, a small squadron of stormtroopers marched out, the chrome-armored Captain leading the way.

                Rey tilted her head slightly as she watched, her palms lifting to press to the window as she leaned in.

                Kylo Ren brought up the rear, his black-clothed figure storming in his usual manner, hands clenched into fists at his side as he moved. His hood was raised up, a dark shadow in the bright sun, his head completely hidden away.

                Rey felt her heart quicken, her light eyes fixed on him. Even after everything, how did he still make her feel this way?

                As the squadron moved toward the awaiting Battlecruiser, the Captain paused, seeming to wait for the knight at the end of the landing strip. He reached her, coming down the center of the group as the stormtroopers parted like a sea in his wake, and they seemed to exchange words for a moment before the Captain nodded her armored head curtly and turned to march toward the ship.

                Kylo Ren stood stiffly for another moment still. And then he lifted his head and turned it, looking over his shoulder in her direction.

               Rey returned the stare though he wore his helmet beneath his hood. She wasn’t sure if he was actually seeing her or perhaps just sensing her. Or maybe he just knew that his living suite was the one he was currently looking at. But then he turned his head away and moved off to another ship, a smaller ship that seemed to resemble him almost too well with its sleek edges and black shielding.

                She waited as he disappeared within, as the engines came online a minute later. And she watched as the ship took to the air easily. It would seem Kylo Ren had learned a thing or two from his father, she thought distantly as she watched the long metal hull and wings gleam smoothly in the sunlight. The Battlecruiser fell into place behind the black ship a moment later, shooting into the blue sky, both ships vanishing within moments.

                Rey stared for another long moment still, her fingers suddenly beginning to tremble as she understood only then what had just happened. And with adrenaline suddenly beginning to push through her body, she whirled around and ran.

                Stopping by the couch long enough to yank the trousers off its back, she frantically climbed into them and then pulled on her top without bothering with the bands for her breasts. Winding the sash around her waist haphazardly, she sat to step into her boots. Finally fully dressed, she cast a quick glance around the room, seeing nothing that she would need. The knight didn’t keep weapons in his living quarters. _They_ were the only weapons he utilized. Springing from the couch, she lunged for the doors and the console directly beside it, coming to a heaving stop to stare at the face.

                The console employed a security lock-code pad, the face of the console itself offering several options for comfort and emergencies. All of which were off-limits, it seemed, dependent on being fed the proper lock-code or utilizing sensors to verify an identity. She grimaced as she stared at the console, as she tried to think. She wouldn’t be able to bypass it by lock-code alone; she had no idea what special codes or numbers the knight used, what dates or specific numbers he held close enough to his heart. Her fingerprints did not match Kylo Ren’s, nor did they share the same eyes for the retinal scan or the same voice.

                She didn’t know anyone whose voice could even measure up to his with its depth and coolness.

                But she’d known this would be the issue. All these weeks of trying to hatch a plan and she had expected this. She glanced over her shoulder toward the vents that had remained shut when she had needed them to filter out the smoke weeks before when her depression and rage had set Kylo Ren’s bed on fire and trapped her behind an impenetrable door. If she could finagle the face plate for those vents open, she could crawl out through them into the vent works and attempt to find her way down to the main level that led to the landing strip. Even in escaping, she didn’t think she would be able to coerce another storm trooper to help her again, not the way she had been able to on StarKiller base when she’d been restrained after Ren’s interrogation. And luckily, Plan C depended on that. Plan B depended on being able to escape through the vents altogether.

                Plan A depended on her being able to work off her training with the Master of the Knights of Ren to influence the circuitry and the electricity powering the consoles and the locks.

                Staring at the console, Rey breathed in deeply, eyes fluttering shut. She could do this. Granted, she had never been able to master the task when Ren… _Ben_ …had set her to it, when he had almost pleaded with her to overcome the circuitry just so that she wouldn’t be trapped again. But she had seen it in his face as well, in his expression.

                He had been afraid to teach her how to override the security lock-codes and consoles, had been afraid that she would set out to do exactly what she was attempting now. But being barred behind closed doors with no chance of escape had also weighed heavily on him and he had decided to err on the side of safety, on _her_ safety. He had wanted her safe in moments like the one that had transpired weeks before, and he had weighed her life versus her attempts at escape and still come down on her side.

                And now she was going to attempt to override these security consoles through the circuitry because if she couldn’t master it, or at least trigger it in the next few minutes, she would have to climb up through the vents and find her way through them out toward the hangar bays to escape.

                After that, she had no idea what she would do. But freedom was a better option than captivity.

                _Just breathe._

                But even as she closed her eyes again, as she breathed to calm her pulsing heart, she couldn’t focus well enough to make any change to the console commands, to disrupt the electricity the way droids could with their electroshock probes, to override the controls physically. Couldn’t even make it register her attempts. The silvery, whispering voices of the Force evaded her completely, her ears registering nothing but silence and her mind falling consistently back on the knight.

                What had she been thinking? Of course she wouldn’t be able to use Plan A. She hadn’t been able to master it from the start with Ren hovering beside her, why did she think she would’ve been able to conquer it now?

                Because she’d felt as if she had been failing him at not being able to grasp it. The same way she had felt when Luke’s training hadn’t paid off at times, when she hadn’t been able to put herself in the proper mindset to accomplish what had been asked of her. She had failed from the start and now, under such frantic pressure, she still couldn’t perform. Except this time there was no one here to watch her attempt and no one here to witness her failure. All of her blocks and walls were being created solely by her now.

                Grimacing, she slammed her hands on the wall on either side of the console, wanting to punch holes into it. Now she knew where Kylo Ren’s anger had come from in her dreams in the forest that one night. How he had punched the tree trunk twice, causing her to recoil and hide behind her hands. For different reasons, but still an anger turned inward for being weak, for not being good enough, for not being able to overcome. She wanted to take her anger out on the wall herself in her despair.

                “Forget it. Forget it,” she whispered harshly and she spun away from the console, looking toward the vents. She would be able to reach one directly over the couch if she stood up on the back of it. The wall protruded out within a foot of the ceiling, the indication that it had a vent behind its surface that traversed the length of the room before passing out through the doors of the living quarters. She would use that to navigate the layout of the vents and try to find her way down below to freedom. Her objective was the same as it had been when she’d been held captive on StarKiller; escape, not infiltration.

                Darting toward the couch, she hopped up onto its cushions and looked toward the vent with a critical eye. The flat face of it was held in place with screws and the vents were flipped open. Ren had asked for the vents to remain in an open position after the incident with the fire. She couldn’t make the vents vacuum the air away but they were to remain open now to, at least, offer an escape passage for the smoke should it happen again. That was fine with her. She would just need to remove the face of the vent and then climb in and find her way throughout. It could very well take her hours but she didn’t care then. She would suddenly disappear from the knight’s room and he probably wouldn’t even realize she was truly gone until she was far enough away to find help off the planet and back to Takodana.

                If the Resistance had still somehow left a squadron on Takodana in the midst of relocating.

                A small crack formed in her heart at her thoughts. He wouldn’t know that she had disappeared. He would worry over her, worry that she had been dragged back to see the Supreme Leader, that she was off suffering somewhere, if not in his own quarters. He would search every room in the base, would search every cell, and then reach out to her with the Force when he came up empty. He was stronger than her, would immediately hone in on her especially if he had been able to find her across the galaxy when he had been healing in his own tub of bacta. He would find her through their bond and she wouldn’t be able to resist him. Not when she was completely conscious and escaping-

                Her lips parted as she paused to think it over. And her plan changed in her head immediately, her hands curling along the face of the vent.

                Not if she was conscious and escaping. Would he have even more control over her if she was unconscious? He’d still had his way with her when he had been recuperating in his own bath of bacta. But would he have any control of her or even be able to find her if she was in a state deeper than sleep, hinging on comatose?

                No. She had given herself away early on in their encounter, had told him exactly where to find her and he had come for her days later. She had spilled Takodana’s secrets and he had grabbed them and held them close when he had come for her. If she made it out, she would need to contact the Resistance immediately and tell them to run, to move their base. And she would have to be careful in the first few days about contacting them to meet up with them again. The First Order couldn’t know where to find them, not again. And not because of her. She had already unwittingly done them enough damage. It was a miracle Kylo Ren hadn’t immediately told his Supreme Leader where to find the Resistance and how to take them down.

                Turning her attention to the vents, her eyes scanned the screws holding the metal place to the wall. One obstacle at a time then, seeing as how the knight would have nothing in his room that she would be able to use as a weapon. Frowning, she stared hard at the plate as a whole, her hand lifting, fingers curling into the vents and holding on. Breathing in deeply, she counted down from ten slowly, her heart falling back into a semi-normal rhythm as she reached five and then three. And then, her pulse running smoothly, she reached inside toward the whispers in her head, the pale light within.

                The screws began to turn slowly, first the one in the upper left-hand corner and then the one opposite to the right. They spun carefully, simple turns as if she’d had a screwdriver with which to loosen them. Then the two along the bottom began to spin as well, loosening the vent face plate in her grip. Managing to spin them loose just that little bit more, she blinked and took over the task physically, spinning the screws the rest of the way, one after the other, until the four rested in her fist. Shoving them into her pocket, she pulled the vent plate free and searched the vent critically. She would fit into it, though maneuvering through it would be a pain.

                Whatever freedom required, she decided.

                Setting the vent plate inside the vent itself, she raised herself on tiptoe for the smallest bit of leverage and then hopped up, tossing her upper body as deep into the black vent as she could. The surface inside was slippery, her hands immediately losing their grip and sending her back down to the back of the couch clumsily. Grimacing, she tossed a quick glance around the room before shutting down the option. If she used something on which to balance and give her even more height, the first place the knight would look upon returning would be the vent if he found something upended beneath it and out of place. She would need to do this herself with no other piece of furniture so as to at least give herself a better head start.

                Sighing irritably, she turned back to the gaping vent and slid her hand along a surface again. Slippery metal. Fine. She brought her hands to her mouth and breathed into them hotly, warming her cool dry skin with each exhale until they were as hot as her breaths and clammy. And looking up at the vent she counted to three before jumping once more and thrusting her body into it as far as she could.

                She immediately began to slip along its belly again but she slapped her palms down on the sides and briefly cheered inwardly as they held, the moisture on her hands catching and dragging along the metallic surfaces. Quickly jamming her elbows to halt her slow slide back down, she winced as the edge of the vent plate dug into her ribs with a pointy edge.

                Whatever freedom required, she told herself with a deep, calming breath.

                Urging strength into her arms, she yanked her body forward and up, attempting to drag her legs as the deadweight they represented. Her triceps reflexively began to burn, muscles quivering.

                That was one bad thing with the Resistance; she had become comfortable there. Three meals a day with numerous other meals if she had requested them, and her training with Luke had barely been physical; his method of training had, insofar, been all about reaching deep within to recognize and appreciate the Force before utilizing it. She had noticed the small weight gain she had accumulated within the first month and had staved off anymore merely by forcing herself to understand that there would still be more food in the morning.

                Kylo Ren had been the one to drag her back to physical form; stronger than when she had been a mere scavenger on Jakku for she’d barely had the food to support her life and hard work on the desert planet. But here on this base, with the proper amount of food balanced with the physical and mental training she’d put herself through in her cell, she was at her best.

                How strange.

                Dragging enough of her body into the vent, she lowered herself face down to breathe for a moment, regaining herself just enough for the last pull. And then, straining once more, she kicked her body forward and collapsed wearily onto the belly of the vent, her exhalation echoing softly in the quiet darkness. Her efforts had resounded eerily throughout the vent and into the shadows beyond. She couldn’t afford to continue to be so loud, especially now that she was on her way. She rose onto her hands and knees, and inched back slightly to look over her shoulder out of the vent to Kylo Ren’s quarters below. If he entered his rooms and looked around, at first glance he would see nothing amiss. He would sense that she was not still sequestered in his quarters but he would not immediately notice that she had escaped through the vent since it was overhead and basically just a part of the background; who ever really paid attention to vents anyway?

                It would be at least a half hour or longer before he would even realize that the vent plate had been unscrewed and placed within the vent itself, leaving a gaping hole in his suite. And that was only if he faced it a certain way.

                He would see it if he came from his refresher, she reflected. Which left her little time.

                Looking ahead, she began to crawl forward on hands and knees carefully, aware that any loud movements and sounds could very well give her up. And as she moved, she felt her pulse slow to normal, her vision squaring in on her task at hand.

                Whatever freedom required.

 

                She had been crawling along for over an hour and her knees and palms were tired. She had stopped multiple times just to stretch her legs out, to shake out her wrists from supporting her upper body as she had slithered along carefully in the vents. She had traversed numerous descents in the vents, had dropped her body carefully down vertical pathways to lower herself into other horizontal levels and she had risked quick glances into numerous suites and rooms through their respective vent plates. She had passed several bays that employed weapon construction, several workout areas. And she was currently hovering over a medical bay.

                She had yet to hear any ships return to the First Order base though she was sure that she had heard some take off to parts unknown. It just meant that she still had time in her escape to flee before the knight returned. He was the only one she really worried about; he would put a dent in her plans, would find her faster than others could.

                But even as she looked into the medical bay, she felt her heart constrict slightly. He would worry about her. He would come for her and somehow, she didn’t want to disappoint him that she would attempt an escape from the base though he should’ve known that she had never wanted to stay.

                At this point, he was the only reason she had remained and she wondered then when that had happened? When had she actually begun to worry about him and wonder what he felt for her, whether he worried over her? And he had worried about her; he did even then. He watched over her and protected her, defended her against the others on the First Order base. But when had she begun to care about him at all?

                And why couldn’t she stop?

                That was a thought for another time. Peeking out through the open slats in the vent, she watched as a medical technician bustled around the room, followed by a rolling droid.

                “Excuse me,” she called into the room through the metal plate.

                The technician started, spinning around to look toward the doorway.

                “Behind you. In the vent,” she supplied, almost wanting to laugh when he twisted in her direction and then looked up toward the vent plate.

                “What in blazes-” the technician stuttered out, seeing her hidden in the vent. And as if only then realizing what he was looking at, he made a lunge toward the console on the doors.

                _“Stop!”_ Rey ordered, her voice ringing out clearly and echoing in the room.

                The man’s hand hovered over the console for a single straining moment. Then it came down slowly to hang at his side as he straightened in silence.

                _“You will turn around and walk back toward me,”_ Rey commanded, her voice falling to a monotonous level, low and blank.

                The technician turned as she had directed and sluggishly moved in her direction.

                _“You will give me a sedative in an injector. Now. Fetch that for me.”_ And as he turned to head over to a wall of metal closets and drawers, she called after him quickly, _“Two! I will need two.”_

                The droid followed behind his owner almost quizzically, the small metallic head spinning to look at her before turning back and shadowing the technician.

                The medical technician tapped a small button on a console between a set of latches and one of the transparisteel windows slid open, revealing an assortment of vials nestled on shelves within. He reached for a specific grouping of vials and retrieved two, pulling them free of the set and sealing the closet once more. Moving dumbly, he reached into a drawer below and pulled forth a small empty injector gun, the metal gleaming under the harsh lights of the med lab.

                _“You will give them to me,”_ Rey ordered in the same low, monotonous tone.

                Straightening, the technician turned and moved toward the vent plate where Rey waited. Seeing the sudden height difference he reached over and pulled up a small stool to climb onto it. Then he was reaching up and handing the vials through the slats of the vent plate.

                Rey quickly pocketed the vials, aware that she still had the screws from the vent from Kylo Ren’s quarters in her pockets as well.

                The injector was a bit harder to pass through but with some wiggling and pulling, it was passed into the vent and also pocketed.

                The technician waited silently on the other side of the vent.

                _“You will tell me how far below the landing docks are from here,”_ she stated.

                The technician responded, “I will tell you how far below the landing docks are from here.”

                Rey wanted to haul off and smack him. _“Then do it,”_ she growled at him, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

                The technician answered dully. “The landing docks are five floors down.”

                Five floors. She could do five floors as long as the drops weren’t too steep. None of the vent works had foot or handholds within them. She had fallen down one so deep, not realizing until afterward that she had dropped two floors and almost killed herself. Plus the noise had been deafening. She didn’t need a repeat of that.

                _“You will return to your work and you will not remember this encounter,”_ she ordered him.

                “I will return to my work and I will not remember this encounter,” he echoed and with those words he lowered himself off the stool, set it back in its place and returned to the screen he had been typing on, turning his attention to the strings of DNA hovering in holo form above the screen.

                Inhaling deeply in relief, Rey carefully slipped away from the mouth of the vent, returning to the main vent passage and continuing onward.

 

                Carefully lowering herself down another drop in the passageway, Rey peeked ahead into the darkness. She would have one more drop before she hit the level she needed to be on and she was not surprised to discover that the air was a bit lighter now, that she could catch the scent of grass and trees in the vent. The nearest opening would lead to the docking bays seeing as how they were aboveground. Once she made it to the bays, she would slip out through the landing strips and make a run for it, disappearing into the forests and finally escaping.

                She wanted to weep from the mere relief.

                Carefully moving forth along the vents, she suddenly saw light up ahead, the glow of muted sunlight. Her heart immediately began to thunder and she abandoned silence to the wind, making her way toward the light coming in through the slats of a vent plate along the bottom of the passageway. Coming up on it, she peeked down through, arching her head to look further ahead through one of the slats.

                The edge of the landing strips were in sight as she angled her neck and she realized that directly below waited the enclosed area of the docking bay. The overhead cover of the docking bay thrust the bays into shadow but the landing strips were lit by full sunlight, the woods just ahead at their borders.

                Dragging her body forward over the vent, she wrapped her fingers through the slats and pushed, testing their strength. It held firmly in place which was understandable seeing as how inspections would be common on a base such as this. Sighing, she crouched over it on hands and knees and stared at the screws from the inside. She had done this in Kylo Ren’s quarters; she could do the same here. She just had to hope that no one would come out onto the docking bays in the next few minutes and that if they did, that they wouldn’t notice the screws when they fell and hit the floor below.

                Gazing at the ends of the bolts until they blurred, she felt for the voices in her head, in her blood. Their silver tones ran bell-like together, whispering and tinkling at the edges of her thoughts. And as her vision crystallized once more, she bowed her head and focused on the four screws, reaching.

                The nut on the upper right began to turn slowly, just as the screws in the knight’s quarters had. It left the bolt as it unscrewed and she swept it aside into the vent as it came free, her eyes darting to the screw to the upper left. That one was turning as well now and she held back the smile that threatened to break over her face.

                _You can do this. You can do this. You’re right there-_

                A third screw, the one to the bottom right, began to turn as well and with one more deep inhalation, Rey turned her gaze to the last resistant bolt. As if sensing her attention, it began to turn as well, spinning faster than the other two. Unable to resist the grin that flashed across her face, she threaded her fingers through the slats once more and curled them, taking hold of the metal plate as she flicked the loosened nuts aside with her other hand. She heard three distinctive sounds when the bolts fell to the floor but she didn’t pay it any mind as she felt the vent plate come loose in her hand. Moving silently, she lowered the plate from the vent enough to turn it and fit it back into the vent, placing it aside within the metal passageway and looking down to the docking bay floor below.

                Gathering herself, she pushed her weight onto her palms positioned on the far side of the vent and she dragged her knees in tight to her chest, crowded in the small space. Moving carefully, she slowly lowered a foot and then a leg through the opening of the vent, already reaching for the floor below blindly. Her other leg followed and she grimaced as she was left supporting her entire weight with her arms and shoulders alone, her legs hovering over open space.

                And then, pointing her feet, she let herself drop from the vent.

                Her legs took the brunt of the fall far below, hitting the floor and bending to absorb the impact of the drop. A foot slipped immediately on a screw but she recovered almost instantly, her blood beginning to rush with adrenaline as she saw her escape at the end of the landing strip. Reacting instinctively, she risked a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure there were no personnel or pilots on the landing strip behind her.

                Kylo Ren stood directly behind her, mask in place, hood over his head, tall overbearing form waiting with hands clenched into fists at his sides.

                Rey’s immediate reaction was flight. She understood a moment later that it wasn’t because of him, wasn’t that she felt he would hurt her for trying to escape.

                It was because she just wanted to go _home_.

                Mindlessly panicking, she spun around and moved to run.

                The knight’s arms wound around her waist a second later, lifting her clear off her feet easily and hauling her sideways, forcing her down to the floor roughly.

                A cry broke from her, loud and painful, as she crashed to the floor. “ _No!_ ”

                Kylo Ren pushed her down and crouched over her, trapping her under his heavy frame and immediately whirling to look at a corner of the docking station, his hand flying up into the air as his other clamped down on her neck and kept her low.

                Flailing under his grip and weight, Rey followed his eyes, resting on the security camera that she hadn’t even realized was there.

                The small camera suddenly exploded, glass cracking and flying as the knight clenched his hand into a fist. Then he was turning to the other corner of the docking bay, tossing the same hand out quickly.

                The camera in that corner burst as well, pieces falling to the floor quietly.

                And then they were left in silence, Rey struggling under his hand and panicking, her entire body bursting with frantic energy. “Let me go! Let me go-”

                “Be quiet,” he hissed in her ear as he bent low beside her, bringing his helmet close to her face and shoving her down further with his hard grip. “Stop struggling. If they’ve seen us, they will send stormtroopers. We have to go back-”

                “ _No!_ ” she screamed and she tried to push his hand away from the back of her neck. “Please! Ben, _please_! Let me go! It’s right there! Just let me go! I won’t tell anyone where you are, I won’t tell anyone anything! Just let me go-”

                “Rey, stop,” he growled at her and he turned away momentarily to look toward the doors of the hangar bays, his recognizable tone sifting out of his helmet. “It’s only a matter of time if they’ve seen you. Stop fighting, we have to move-”

                “ _No!”_ she shouted and tears were already rising in her eyes, her hands reaching blindly for purchase along the smooth metallic floor as she tried to pull free of his hand. “No! I want to go _home-”_ she cried, her throat raw from her screams.

                Exhaling roughly, he yanked her up from the floor and spun her to face him.

                She was dragged off the slippery surface and when she turned she had a moment to recognize his helmet, the smooth chrome lines and the lightly dented metal around the mouthpiece.

                Then he was lifting a hand and waving it before her face, and she felt blackness seep in from the corners of her vision and sweep her away, her body falling forward limply into warmth and nothingness.

 

** Next Chapter: Chapter Twenty-Eight: **

Rey gazed at him, feeling his exhaustion in the moment, reaching out carefully for his thoughts and unexpectedly receiving more than she could have ever asked for as he laid himself open and bare to her at long last.

 

 


	29. Chapter Twenty-Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay everyone! Please enjoy this smutty chapter after all of the angst, and please prepare yourselves for a Smutty New Year because after this chapter I get into Book III and Book III is basically all just smut. SMUT SMUT SMUT! 
> 
> But I think you guys will like that... *smiles slyly*
> 
> Also, with the next chapter, I will post the links to the playlist for Book III. If you haven't checked out the playlists so far, please try them! I think the songs really do fit and Book III is like non-stop smut and angst and then power couple stuff! So check it out!! Smutty New Year even though I will probably be back to post more smut before this weekend, lol! ALSO, thank you guys always for the comments, the kudos, and just the all around sweet words and awesomeness!

Chapter Twenty-Eight:

 

                Rey came awake slowly, a small grimace crossing her brow as she stirred.

                Moonlight seeped into the room through tall transparisteel windows and she recognized the windows to be Kylo Ren’s. Mumbling under her breath, she rolled over slightly and stared out through the glass into the darkness and for a small second she was confused.

                The woods outside swayed with a gentle breeze, the moons high above the canopy of trees, round and silent. Beautiful. Moving slowly, she dragged her feet out from under the covers and let them fall over the side of the bed as she sat up to stare at the dark moonlit sky hazily.

                Something had happened today, she reflected numbly, her head dropping low to her chest as she tried to remember. Hitting blankness, she turned slightly to scan the bedroom instead. She was the only person in attendance and she frowned wearily, attempting to understand, to remember still.

                He was obviously not here, nor in the adjacent quarters.

                Leaning far off the bed to peek toward the living room, she blinked drowsily again, trying to gain some semblance of familiarity. What had occurred the night before that she was in his bed? Where had he gone? She was fully clothed so that spoke to what may have transpired and now that she was beginning to awaken, she realized that she really needed a shower. She felt terrible.

                Rising to her feet, she clumsily made her way to the living quarters of the suite and searched it dully from the doorway. The entire room was bathed in darkness with the only light coming from the faint moonlight seeping in through the windows at her back. Shaking her head wearily, she crossed the main living suite and headed toward the refresher, her steps heavy and tired.

               There was something heavy in her pockets; not too heavy but enough of a weight that it was noticeable. She frowned hazily in the darkness, running her fingers over smooth metal, over small pieces of something in the other pocket, over two slender items that seemed to be vials.

                Stumbling into the refresher and still feeling around numbly, the lights came on within, blinding her for a long moment as she sealed herself away within. Moving sightlessly but seeing the room in her mind’s eye, she set the water shower on. The knight must have bathed very recently for there was a dampness to the room, a wet towel hanging off a hook on the wall. The droids probably hadn’t even had a chance to come in to claim the towel to be laundered.

                He must have been in a hurry.

                The spray fell calmly, the warm water beginning to fog the mirrors and glass up. Stripping down, she undressed and then rolled her clothes up into a ball and set them down on the floor beside the door, pulling a clean towel off the shelf over the toilet and setting it aside for when she finished her shower.

                What had happened last night? She still couldn’t remember and she wondered if something intimate had occurred between herself and the knight. She didn’t feel any different besides the numbness and hazy memory.

                Stepping into the shower spray, she slid closed the glass door behind herself and lifted her hands to her chin, cupping her palms to collect water to let it run over her chest and down her body. There was something wonderful about an actual water shower, something purifying in the spray that fell and cleansed her. 

                She set about her task of washing herself tiredly, begging the water to rouse her. By the end of it she was no more awake than she had been before and she exited the stall, wrapping a towel around herself to brush her teeth. If nothing else, that would wake her up. Mint had certain attributes that would stimulate her, that would dissuade her from wanting something sweet and sugary now that she had been exposed to such treats. She brushed her teeth and finished up, wondering what she would wear back to bed. The knight had left her slips to wear to sleep but they were in his closets behind latches. With a sigh she left the refresher clothed in the towel, setting her dirty uniform outside of the refresher door for the droid to come and launder when summoned.

                Stepping back into the coolness of the living suite, Rey made her way toward the bedroom and then toward the right to wave her hand at Kylo Ren’s wall of hidden closets blindly. She doubted it would work and just like everything else on this base, the gesture failed her. With a weary sigh, she leaned down to look for the lines in the wall where she would find the latches.

                And suddenly had the vision of hopping down from a vent into a crouch, of being shoved down to the cold floor of the docking bay upon being discovered.

                Inhaling deeply and eyes snapping wide into wakefulness, Rey whirled around and turned to face the doorway of the bedroom, searching the room blindly, frantically.

                _Calm down. Calm down-_

                Forgetting about the slip, she raced out of the bedroom to the main living suite and lifted her eyes to the vent over the couch.

                The face plate was back in place, screws replaced, with metal strips now soldered to the vent plate and walls. There would be no unscrewing of that panel now.

                Black anger rose deep inside as she stared at the vent plate, as she realized that she would not be able to escape as easily now. It would take an impressive amount of mental strength to rip those metal pieces off the vent walls. And where had he gotten the screws from?

                Spinning around, she darted back to her soiled clothes and dug into the pockets, searching. That would explain that strange weight she had felt in them before bathing, the metallic item and the vials. Her hunt provided the screws belonging to the vent plate here in the room. She was also still in possession of the vials of sedative along with the lightweight injector. Cradling the items in her palms, she frowned, weighing her options. She didn’t know what to do at the moment, especially with no escape visible. But she couldn’t leave the items in her pockets if her clothes were to be laundered.

                Taking them with her, she ran back to the bedroom and searched the room frantically. He had nowhere in which to hide the items except the space under the bed pallet. It afforded her room but would also easily be found in a search if he decided to do one.

                Tossing herself to her knees, she quickly shoved the items under the bed, pushing them as far back as she could reach just as the door to the suite swished open.

                Panicking, Rey dragged herself back to her feet, clutching the towel to her chest and hovering just out of view of his main room long enough to regain her breath. Then she was moving to the doorway on weak legs to wait for the knight to see and acknowledge her.

                Hesitating by the suite door, he turned his head, helmet included, toward her as the doors slid closed behind his imposing form and threw him back into darkness. As if seeing her brought him to weariness, he sighed deeply and then reached up to loosen the helmet to then drag it off.

                He seemed exhausted, Rey noted dimly of his low hanging shoulders, her heart pounding in her ears.

                Entering the living suite fully, he dropped his helmet on a lamp table along the way toward her, removing his black gloves to deposit them beside the helm. Then he slowed as he reached her, pausing on the other side of the bedroom doorway guardedly.

                Rey stared at him carefully in the silence of the night, gauging his reaction to her. That she could see, there was nothing but fatigue on his face, his eyes rimmed with dark circles, his mouth tight. And somehow that made her angry; that _he_ would be weary when he was keeping _her_ captive. The ways in which he almost made it seem as if he wanted to return her to the Resistance, only to constantly end up backpedaling, to foil her attempts so completely. Her anger was so absolute and painful then that she almost couldn’t speak.

                “How could you do this to me?” she asked him in a faint whisper, her brow drawing upward, feeling raw deep inside.

                As if expecting that response, his eyes slipped shut and he lifted a hand to his brow, rubbing at it roughly. “Rey-”

                “How could you do this to me?” she demanded again, her voice pitching higher. “I was so close! It was _right there!_ All you had to do was turn away and _let me go!_ I could’ve made a run for it and I would’ve found my way! I would’ve re-established contact with the Resistance and they would have _come_ for me-”

                “They would’ve been found out! _You_ would’ve been found out!” he suddenly shouted at her and he spun away from her as he broke off, his body taut with an unexpected energy; the type of energy one possessed when they found their second wind even though they’d had no sleep the night before.

                He seemed to regain himself slightly as she stared at him, as she watched his tense form pause before brimming over and moving once more urgently.

                “There is a Guard,” he began slowly, his tone measured, “stationed in the forests surrounding this base for _klicks_. Even my knights are a part of the patrol. You already know of their resentment with you, they would’ve killed you on sight,” he snapped at her, pacing angrily several steps and gesturing wildly. “And I am trying everything in my _power_ to hold the Supreme Leader off from discovering you and the Resistance! Every day there is another attempt to extract the information from me and I am doing my _damnedest_ not to give your secrets away!”

                Rey frowned at him, her brow slipping low.

                “The base at Takodana is empty,” he said, his voice falling to a restrained murmur, his tone tempered and even. “They are all gone because of me, because I was able to stall Hux and Phasma long enough for them to clear out.” He lifted his hands to his face and rubbed at his eyes roughly, causing her to wince slightly at how hard he was on his own skin and body. “This mission I was just sent out on gave us nothing, just as I knew it would. The First Order has nothing tangible on the Resistance because of _me_ , because of the people I have set up to throw them off the scent. I have been trying to find their new location so that I can return you to them and _then you go and attempt a foolish escape just as my contacts are closing in!_ ”

                Rey blinked, shaking her head slightly. “What?” she questioned, utterly baffled.

                He didn’t bother replying, coming to a stop and exhaling loudly, tiredly. His hand shot back into the air, dragging through his hair and settling at the nape of his neck where it tightened as if to loosen stiff muscles.

                “W-why didn’t you tell me?” she asked him and she shook her head at his back again, almost stuttering. “Why didn’t you _warn_ me-”

                He spun around and sent her a glare bordering on disbelief. She hadn’t even known his face could contort into such an expression seeing as how his default countenance was cold moodiness and distance. “Warn you?” he demanded faintly and he suddenly darted toward her, coming to loom over her smaller frame menacingly. _“Do you even-”_

                And he cut off, merely staring at her for such a long spell that Rey unexpectedly felt the inadequacies in herself, noticed at what sort of disadvantage he had her at then; wrapped in nothing but a towel, practically hidden in his shadow, and trapped once more in his living quarters.

                “Do you even understand what it is that I have paid in bringing you here?” he asked her quietly, frowning deeply. “Do you understand how much I have-”

                “Don’t,” she warned him firmly, her face tilting away coldly as his words rankled her.

                “-I have done,” he continued, “to protect your precious Resistance from being found out? How much control I need to have _every day_ to stall the Supreme Leader? To trick him into thinking that I have no information in finding them? How _often_ I have to hold him off from _destroying_ you any time he wishes to speak to you?”

                “Don’t,” she hissed again, her jaw tightening. “I wouldn’t _be_ in this position if you’d never taken me from my home in the first place, if you had never _come_ for me. I wouldn’t, and neither would you! We would’ve gone on perfectly well if you had _just-_ ”

                “How _often_ he asks for you,” he persisted and now they were speaking over each other, and how would anything ever get done between them at this rate? “How much Hux wants to put his _claws_ into you and offer you up as a sacrifice? Your being here has been the very _bane_ of my _existence_!”

                Rey recoiled at his words, her eyes narrowing. “My being here is your _fault!_ ” she shouted at him, her entire body tightening in anger. “ _You_ brought me here! _You_ snuck into my home and _you_ carried me off here to this place! You have kept me captive here for _weeks_! All of these things that you claim to have saved me from and they’re _your fault_! You brought this all on yourself-”

                “If I hadn’t come to take you, _he_ would have,” Kylo Ren growled through gritted teeth, baring them between tight lips in the moonlight as he spoke. “It was only a matter of time before we found your new base, before he realized that I knew exactly where you had been the entire time and how long I’d had the information.” He huffed at her, eyes dropping low before sweeping back up to her face. “ _Lest you forget_ , you were the one to tell me where to locate the new base. _You_ were the one to tell me, in the middle of a forest, how to _find_ you-”

                “You tricked me,” she snarled at him instantly, a hand curling up to point an index finger at him from close up. “You came to _me_. You invaded _my_ dreams. You took _advantage_ of me-” And she cut him off with a swipe of her hand to silence his argument as he opened his mouth to speak again. “Even if you didn’t know you were doing it, you came to me and you had your way with me in my dreams!” she shouted and she suddenly shut her eyes, shaking her head frantically, unwilling to see it then in her mind, in her memories. Unwilling to be led astray by her heart and forgoing her head altogether. “You made me feel…you made me _feel-”_

                She lost the rest of her thought as she remembered what it was that she had felt for him, her expression sinking into a pained grimace, her words falling apart.

                He was not one to be easily distracted though. Frowning slightly, finally dwindling into silence, he merely gazed at her for a long stinging moment. “What did you feel?” he asked quietly, his anger slipping away.

                _No_. She shook her head at herself inwardly. No. He was not about to do that to her.

                She went to turn away from him, to put distance between them because she suddenly needed it more than she needed breath, more than she needed escape. But he reached out and caught her by the crook of her elbow, hauling her back roughly into him. “What did you feel?” he asked her again in a whisper, his tone dropping dangerously low, his mouth hovering over her temple as she was pulled against him, her head instinctively bowing low along her chest.

                “You know what I felt,” she muttered, turning her face away though he had drawn her unbearably close.

                “Tell me,” he said softly, searching her face from so close even as she avoided him.

                “Why?” she demanded, her arm curled up around his hand, fingers pulling close to her shoulder. The damn towel did nothing to give her any sort of comfort. She was at such a disadvantage that she hated herself just as much as she hated him in the moment.

              “Tell me,” he whispered again, his breath warm on her face, his mouth brushing against her forehead. “Tell me what you felt. Make this all-” And he broke off, his words left pleading.

                She drew her head back a fraction and lifted it at his tone, eyes meeting his directly, wanting to read his emotions on his face, in his stare. “Make this all what?” she asked softly, hesitantly.

                His eyebrows lifted, his breath coming in a weary exhale. “Make this all worth something,” he uttered, his strength seeming to leave his body as he spoke.

                Rey gazed at him, feeling his exhaustion in the moment, reaching out carefully for his thoughts and unexpectedly receiving more than she could have ever asked for as he laid himself open and bare to her at long last.

                 Everything he had said he had done for her suddenly took on new meaning as she stared at him, as she saw deep into him to his very core, and she found herself trembling from the depth of his emotions, of his _exhaustion_.

                Coming for her before Snoke sent his General or Captain for her, understanding that if he took her from them and attempted to teach her, to _train_ her, that he could try to save her from an immediate execution at the hands of the First Order, could attempt to mold her into a weapon for the Dark Side even as he had craved her Light.

                Hiding her and the location of the Resistance away, hiding the whereabouts of his own mother from the Supreme Leader once he’d had it, once Rey had given it to him in a dream that he had prompted. How he had looked around the woods of Takodana helplessly, _fearfully_ , knowing such a vital piece of information and realizing that he would have to hide it from the power of his master to save her and those that she cared for; no longer anyone _he_ could care for, but people _she_ had come to care for.

                Masking the Resistance’s whereabouts until they’d had enough time to run and settle elsewhere when he had finally come for her with his knights, when he had enlisted the help of the disloyal son to the traitorous admiral embedded within the ranks of the Resistance.

                Rey gasped shallowly at the truth, at how she had sat with the man, Cam, when he had come to her that night during the Resistance’s festivities, when he had abruptly recognized her in a way that no one else could have. How he had called her a scavenger, as if he had _known_.

                _You knew. **You** did. You were there. First it was him but then it was you_ , she whispered deep within herself, deep within him.

                _You found him attractive_ , his mental voice murmured, coming tonelessly, reverberating within the dark recesses only to fall away into silence once more.

                _Don’t you dare_ , she tossed back into that deep blackness, anger rising within again as her words echoed eerily. _It was you. It was you in the end with me, you sitting with me at the table. You took him over-_

                _Yes_ , he replied wearily. _He was sent into your ranks and he was my slave. He allowed himself to be taken over by me and I was there that night. And you were beautiful. You shone like the sun and I couldn’t look away-_

                _Is he still **there** ,_ she demanded, suddenly frantic, overwhelmed, her cry echoing in the abyss of their thoughts, in the hollow silence _. Is he still there? Did you leave him in the Resistance-_

                _No. No. He’s here now. Once you were taken, the admiral was discovered along with her son and he is here now in this base. He is here._

                She wanted to bend over in anguished relief, wanted to lift her hands to her face to cry into her palms. How easily she had been overtaken and subdued, how easily she had been _fooled_ -

                _How could you do this? How could you do this,_ she asked him in a pained whisper over and over until her words ran together into one long mantra, her agony and brimming tears wracking her form. _Howcouldyoudothishowcouldyoudothishowcouldyoudothis?_ She felt herself attempt to hunch over, her body moving instinctively, reaching blindly. But she encountered a hard wall and she could only press her face to it for support, falling apart against its strength, its unyielding surface. _How could you do this…to me?_

                _I had to_ , he whispered and a firm hand lifted to grasp her face, to clutch it tightly against that wall. _I had to. They would have killed you and I had to-_

                And he showed her more then, showed her so many things that she hadn’t understood, things that she had faulted him for when all he had wanted was _her_. From the beginning, from so early on when he had recognized the Force within her, when she had first only sparked his interest, before they had initiated the bond together. He had fallen for her immediately and he hadn’t known what to do with himself. He had only understood that her life had hinged on him and his decisions, and he had done what he’d thought was best.

                And now the rest of his decisions and actions were coming to light and he was revealing himself to her wearily, helplessly; no longer able to hide.

                How beautiful he had found her in a flash of a vision of the night of those Resistance festivities, how he had been Cameron for only moments but had immediately wanted her as she had run from him. She saw herself in his memories, looking toward his mother, the General surrounded by the admirals as she had stooped to pick up her heels in that gorgeous gown that reminded him of the one his grandmother had once worn. How she had looked at him one more time over her perfect bare shoulder before taking her leave.

                How the dress had felt later in the night when he had visited her in her dreams, how the folds had fallen silkily between his fingers in the dim light of the moon through the portholes in her ceiling. How she had felt when he had craved her and then buried himself deep inside of her, a breath and a sigh leaving him at her tightness and warmth, at her cry and her soft moans as she had shifted beneath him. How stunning she had been and how she had aroused him, how easily he had succumbed to her, making his decision to come for her easy, to steal her away and mold her right then and there in the midst of a dream.

                How he had loved her then.

                And then the darkness. How he had shielded her from Snoke when he had called for her, understanding after that first time that she would only ever crack under him than change, as the Supreme Leader had tried to break her down and dismantle her, piece by piece. The pain and horrors he had put himself through that second time and how reminiscent they were of his youth and early adulthood when he had finally succumbed to the Supreme Leader and had, himself, been broken down until he was just a husk of the person he had once been.

                _No_ , Rey whispered painfully into the darkness they shared, shaking her head in misery beneath that hand that cradled her close to the wall. _No-_

                Coming to her aid when she had set his previous quarters on fire in anger and sorrow for he had known that Hux had been ready and more than willing to rid his base of the greatest threat they had ever faced; a threat that Kylo Ren himself had willingly brought onto their turf, a threat that he had then proceeded to brush off when any of the First Order had made an attempt to tame her.

                _I was so cold_ , she said faintly, wishing him to understand what she had felt that day when she had set his bed on fire.

                _I know_ , he murmured, his voice echoing.

                And then, finally, making her yearn for his touch even when he had hidden himself away from her for fear of falling; for fear of getting too close and giving her the upper hand when he’d known from the start that he had needed to protect her and watch over her in this place. Recognizing the fact that feeling anything for her would put him in a position of weakness to _help_ her.

                Even though he had already fallen.

                Rey struggled in the darkness of his thoughts, the darkness of his bedroom so far away then; felt him under her body suddenly as she came back to herself, as the room became tangible once more. She lifted her head, realizing that she had placed her cheek to his chest, that he had wrapped a hand around her face and held her close as she had seen deep to his very core.

                Looking up, she found his dark eyes and held them with her light gaze, her eyebrows drawing in. “Ben,” she whispered, and she raised her hand to his face, her own falling in despair as she finally understood.

                His eyes slipped closed as she pressed her palm to his jaw, as her thumb trailed the scar on his cheek. His brow drew in and she knew then that he was contemplating his next words, gathering them together for it seemed an undertaking to voice them. “You are all I think about. You are always in my head, always whispering deep inside.”

                She felt her own brows lift, a lightness rising within to somehow soothe him. “I know. The pitter-patter of my feet as I scurry around like a mouse in your head,” she murmured, repeating his own words from so long ago.

                His breath escaped him in a pained laugh, his shoulders falling once more. He seemed to melt into her palm, leaning into her as if he was too tired to hold himself up anymore.

                Her heart broke then, utterly, completely. How weary he seemed, how achingly exhausted. “Okay,” she whispered and she tilted her head, searching his face and then watching her thumb as she ran it over his scar again. “Okay. Come with me.”

                He seemed to wake marginally at her words, his dark eyes sliding open. “Where?” he questioned, and he straightened slightly in an attempt to brace himself once more, to prepare himself. For him. For her.

                And how sad, that now that she knew everything he had done for her since before she’d even been brought to this base, that it would be him to feel that _he_ couldn’t trust _her_ ; not enough to save them and keep them both safe. The mere thought caused her chest to constrict tenderly. “To the refresher,” she replied quietly and she lowered her palm from his face, trailing it down his clothed neck and chest, running it over his uniform, and reaching for his hand to take it in her own. “To bathe. To wash this day away.”

                He hesitated, his body turning, his eyes shifting toward the doorway of the suite blindly as if expecting someone to come through it and threaten their idyllic moment, their intimacy. Their safety.

                She dragged his attention back, rising onto tiptoe to capture his gaze and to bring him back to her. “It’s just us now,” she whispered to him, knowing full well that she was echoing his words from such a long time ago on a planet of snow.

                His face strained slightly as he recognized her words, as his eyes dropped from hers to her mouth, as he leaned in almost unconsciously.

                But she turned from him, lowering herself back down and moving past him, pulling his taller, broader frame along almost effortlessly. He followed silently, wearily, his footfalls still somehow silent. She led him through his living suite toward the refresher, remembering weeks ago when she had done this before; taking him to the refresher, caring for him as he had rid himself of the darkness that his Supreme Leader had tried to force on her, the darkness that he had taken on himself and endured in her place, many times as a young man and now again as an adult.

                Entering the refresher, the lights came on overhead automatically. She dragged him to the center of the room and turned to face him, searching him critically. He had so many layers on him all of the time that she almost didn’t know how he dealt with it. Shaking her head slightly, she released his hand and turned to set the spray on in the shower stall, bypassing the sonic shower. She wanted a soothing bath for him the way she had needed one for herself earlier. Testing the water, she turned back to him and then straightened boldly. “Take your clothes off,” she instructed.

                With a small, tired curl to a corner of his lips, he murmured, “This would be easier if we were angry with each other.”

                She tilted her head at him curiously. “You like my anger,” she stated almost arrogantly, her Coruscant accent seeming to bring even more lightness to his expression. “You _prefer_ my anger.”

                “I do,” he replied with a heavy sigh. “It’s all I really know of you.”

                She blinked at his words, her heart falling.

                How sad to know that someone who loved you would only know your anger.

                As soon as the words entered her mind, she purged them away, risking a quick glance at his face in the hopes that he hadn’t caught them.

                But his face remained weary though the quirky half smile remained on his face.

                Fighting the sudden swell of emotion deep inside of her chest, she shook her head. “That’s quite all right. There’s more than enough time for that.” And she neared, her hands reaching out for his belt. “Now let’s get these clothes off. I can do it or you can do it-”

                With a slight chuckle, he began to undo the belt, loosening it into her hands and then turning his attention to the rest of his clothes. He had the tunic over his undergarments, the arm bindings, the second layer within before he reached skin. As he rid himself of his clothes, she reached for them, setting them aside on the same level as the extra towels he kept in his refresher. And it was only when he was naked from his waist up that she returned her fists to her hips, head nodding to his trousers.

                “Off with it. All of it.”

                He hesitated. “I can bathe perfectly well on my own,” he stated.

                She arched a brow at him, meeting his eyes. “I’ve already seen you naked.”

                He seemed to gather himself slightly. “As I have you. And you caught me off guard.”

                The corner of her lips quirked. “You did the same to me,” she tossed back. But then she raised her hands, slipping close, her palms sliding forth and up the sides of his tall form, drawing into his bare chest. “You have nothing to be ashamed of-” she murmured to him, fingers gliding over his skin lightly.

                His hand lifted, suddenly pushing along her neck, fingers digging into her hair and curling around her nape.

                She felt herself arch into him, bowed by his fingers in her hair, and the reaction was natural, primal. His scent rose from his bare skin beneath her chin; masculine, metallic, woodsy. Him. Her eyes slipped closed, her lips parting and she felt his breath on her cheek, felt as he bowed his head toward her. As he breathed her in and released tension under her palms.

                “I want you. Tonight,” he whispered, unbearably close but still somehow far away from where she needed him. “Not because of where we come from or what side we’re on. You. Just you. Outside of everything.”

                She swallowed against his words, feeling that if she just lifted herself onto tiptoe, she would meet his mouth. He had spoken words like that to her once before in a lost dream and to hear similar words to those that night, she felt a tremor run through her, her fingers clawing to dig into his skin.

                _“I need you. Now. Tonight.”_

                “Yes,” she replied. “Yes. We just…we need to-”

                His other hand lifted and pulled at the towel from her back, yanking the fabric to loosen at her breast. And then it came free and hung from his grip for a moment before he tossed it aside.

                Rey tamped down on the gasp that had risen at his movement, her eyes flying open.

                His dark eyes reflected her naked form, her own wide stare with dilated pupils. She wanted nothing more in that moment than to drag him down to her mouth, to finally taste him in this real world around them. There had been numerous nights, numerous dreams, _half nightmares_ , where he had come to her and kissed her, ravaged her, worshipped her, but in anger. For once she wanted to feel him and see if her dreams had been true to him and to her memories; if his anger had truly blossomed into something else, something far and different.

                Feeling numb and almost dizzy, she whispered, “Take off your trousers.”

                His stare was still caught firmly on her face, almost helplessly so, but as she blinked hazily at him he released her hair and stepped away, doing as she had instructed. Even bending at the waist to undress, he came down to her height, his eyes meeting hers head on and then traveling her face.

                Sexual attraction was so very real, she realized dimly, never before having as strong a reaction as she did then. She wanted to raise her hands to his face, wanted to curl her fingers into his hair and latch on, wanted to drag him into her. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, her lips parting slightly when she couldn’t seem to get enough air. Every part of her buzzed, tingling, wanting his hands on her as well.

                He rose to his full height once more, fully undressed, and straightened.

                How was he somehow broader and taller when _naked_ , she wondered desperately, her eyes falling to his chest, to his scars, before darting back up to meet his.

                Swallowing through a lump in her throat, she reached for his hand and took it in hers, entwining their fingers together before moving to the shower stall and pulling him along. She felt his eyes on the back of her head, on the slope of her back and the span of her hips, the fall of her legs. She felt them as if they burned her. Stepping in, she turned and drew him in behind her, reaching around his figure to close the stall door. The floor beneath her feet was tiled, wet from her earlier shower, but as if all her senses were heightened, it suddenly felt more pebbled than before. Shaking her head inwardly at the inane thought, she moved to tug him deeper into the stall.

                He pulled her in the rest of the way though, taking a step back into the spray and bringing her with him. Moving into the water, she found it to be slightly cool, unlike the man she pressed herself into. His skin was warm, heat rising from his body as his hand released hers to rise to her waist. He turned her into the shower spray, watching with a small tilt to the corner of his mouth as she raised her head to the water and wet her still-damp hair with it, as she trailed her hands down to her neck and chest.

                “I’ve already showered,” she said to him with that same hint of haughtiness in her voice. “We came here for you.”

                His eyes slid downward, taking in all of her before flashing up to meet hers. “This _is_ for me,” he replied and he wound an arm around her waist, guiding her to face the glass wall of the stall.

                With a frown of confusion, she turned toward the transparisteel surface, lifting her palms to press against it at waist level as he shifted behind her. Then his hands reappeared at her arms, tracing their length up toward her shoulders. He had something in his palm that he brushed along her skin and she recognized the smell as his usual clean scent. A small slab of soap, then. She closed her eyes as his hands moved across her back and shoulders, as they slipped under her arms to trail down the sides of her breasts slowly, tantalizingly.

                She would never be able to use any other scent besides the one he owned, she realized dimly behind closed eyes, her brow tilting upward. “I need-” she said mindlessly, the words escaping her lips before she could rein them back in.

                His mouth came close to her temple, his body brushing against her back enticingly. Her eyelashes fluttered, her own body instinctively moving to push back into his, to graze him exactly where she suddenly needed to feel him. He was hard at the small of her back, his length resting carefully along her rear. A breath left him, fingers tightening on her waist to hold her still. “What do you need?” he asked, his tone strained.

                Her moan was entirely in her head as she turned her head into his mouth, as her fingers clawed into the stubborn surface off the stall.

                _I need to feel you like this, always._

                She shook her head roughly, accidentally bumping him in the jaw at her hard gesture. “I…I…that smell…I just need-”

                As if her words were humorous to him, as was her blind reaction, he laughed quietly into her shoulder as he lowered his mouth to it. “It’s the soap. It’s Trillium soap. My-” And he broke off, his chest rising with a deep breath along her back and bringing him so much closer to her that it almost crippled her with need. “My mother adored the scent and she always kept some to bathe with. I…” he sighed and the breath held a hint of longing. “I have to special order it or seek it out. I can’t normally find it…around the base.”

                Rey felt her body react to his words, felt his fleeting emotion before he brushed it aside. “I need it. I need to smell it-”

                _Always_.

                As if reading her thoughts, sensing her need in her body, he curled into her back and pressed himself to her tightly, lowering his hands to her hips. The bar of Trillium soap was in his palm and he dragged it across the expanse of her belly and hips, working it into a lather as his head dug into the curve of her neck. She felt the slightest brush of his lips, the slip of his tongue along her wet skin and she dropped her head back onto his hard shoulder, giving him admission to her, to more of her.

                He took advantage, his slick hands on her digging into her skin and almost kneading the muscles there, burying hard fingers into her and latching on, holding her close as he groaned into her neck. His hardness slipped along the soap on the slope of her hips, his body reaching for her.

                Then his hand fell low, slipping between her legs to caress her below and she moaned into the surface of the glass wall, fogging it with a desperate breath. His fingers rubbed deep and then parted, returning to her pelvis slowly, with a lingering drag.

                Her forehead dropped to the stall wall as well, her body arching backward into his even as her hips searched for his hand.

                He pushed his figure into her back to anchor her, stopping her pulsing form with a hard grip and a soft breath in her ear. But he didn’t speak, didn’t murmur anything as his hands delved deep again, as he cupped her below with a hard grip and slipped a finger into her, his shoulders rigid around her.

                The sound that came from her mouth was almost primal, renting the air loudly. He had done this to her before in a dream, had begged entry to her body and then conquered her. But here, now, in this real world and unbearable base, he was the only thing to bring her comfort; his touch, his hands, his mouth.

                His finger dipped into her again, drawing out and slipping back in, his thumb caressing the small spot that usually drove her mad. “You’ve done this before as well, to yourself,” he murmured into her ear and his body slid low slightly along her back to give him further access to her, to drive his finger into her once more. To add another finger and then curl in once inside of her.

                She almost buckled at the sensation, her hands slipping along the stall weakly. She knew exactly which moment he meant and she felt the far reaches of humiliation grab for her, grasping to claim and overcome her.

                It was the first night that she had been his prisoner. He had come for her and offered her to a sonic shower, and she had opted for a full shower. She had wanted the fall of the water on her, had wanted more than two minutes to cleanse herself before being returned to that hideous metallic cell.

                “Yes,” she uttered into the glass stall wall, grimacing at the exquisite pain that he pulled from her as he separated his fingers deep within her before dragging them out slowly, her wetness following hotly.

                He thrust his fingers back in roughly, pushing into her back and shoving her smaller frame into the stall wall, her palms pressing against the surface with a slap. “You were not silent.”

                Her humiliation flamed even stronger, her thoughts flying about wildly. That feeling, that presence that she had felt that day when she had brought herself to peak under her own fingers, the ghost of a person at her back and the whisper of a voice in her ear, in her head. She grimaced, pressing her cheek into the stall as he pulled his fingers out languorously, sliding them across her folds and eliciting ripples throughout her entire body, causing her legs to tremble.

                And then he shoved his fingers back in, stretching her as he parted them, his thumb sliding across the core of her almost lazily. “You were so loud in my head, in this refresher, that I almost came outside of the door just hearing you-”

                A cry broke from her lips at his words, at his fingers as they slipped out and then rubbed the very center of her below, as he arched into her back urgently.

                He breathed into her ear, bowed his head low along her jaw as he left his fingers bent inside of her, as his thumb began an earnest caress of her, slipping across that sensitive nub again and again. “Come for me again. Come on _my_ hands now.”

                Rey’s head practically became a part of the stall wall, her pelvis pushing back into his hips, her entire lower body vibrating in need. She was going to climax all over his hand and she would have no way to stop it even if she had wanted to; he knew too much of what she needed, of what set her traitorous body off. Gripping desperately at the wall, she threw her head back as his fingers slipped out of her and trailed her own wetness over her lips and center, as they dug in before circling roughly, his other hand lifting to her breast demandingly, the bar of soap slippery across her skin.

                A curse left her lips, completely improper, but then came the pleas on her lips. “Don’t stop. Don’t-”

                His fingers became all the more insistent, tracing small tight circles below, dipping in low to break the stride, and she heaved in his arms. He knew exactly how to caress her, how to read her, how to bring her to orgasm.

                This shower hadn’t even been about her, she thought blindly, a low moan slipping from her lips.

                His groan in her ear sent gooseflesh across her body, her hips pushing back into his and begging for something that she didn’t even truly understand. She only knew that she didn’t feel complete, that she needed his touch and his body, his whisper in her ear, and his heaviness around her and burying her beneath.

                “Please. Just…just…”          

                He shook his head roughly against her shoulder, his fingers refusing to stop below. “Not yet. We’re going to finish here first,” he murmured, his voice a low thrum along her back. And then he pressed his mouth to ear, slipped his fingers deep into her again for a long moment before dragging them back out roughly. “But then I’m taking you to my bed and I’m going to have you.” His voice dropped low, his words hitched as he pushed her further into the glass wall, as he rubbed circles along her nub in a rhythm. “And I’m going to make you call my name just as I promised you in our dreams.”

                _In our dreams._

                His words brought the oncoming light behind her eyes to dawn, her hips freezing as her climax hit. A cry left her mouth, her entire body stiffening under his fingers as she came and she reached blindly for purchase, her hands flailing.

                One of his caught hers and latched on, the soap clutched in their joined grasp. He curled in tightly as his other hand slowed between her legs and he dragged their clasped hands against her chest tightly, the slab of soap threatening to slip out of their tight grip.

                She felt her heartbeat in their grasp as he pressed it to her breast, as he breathed painfully in her ear. But the waves washing over her were dominant, confusing her and dimming anything else. Another moan slipped from her lips, her eyes squeezing shut tightly as her body convulsed with ecstatic ripples, as she reached for him blindly, desperately. Her thighs moved to close, to trap his hand between but he halted her with a swift movement, clasping the inside of one thigh to stop its mindless movements.

                “I’m going to do that to you again,” he whispered, his breath warm along her cool shoulder. “As many times as you want me to. And then I’m going to have you.”

                Her body, still coming down from her orgasm, practically bowed in his arms. Wordlessly, she nodded against the stall wall, swallowing painfully through a dry throat from crying out.

                Releasing her slowly, Kylo Ren stepped away from her and retreated under the shower, his movements sounding swift and firm.

                Still trembling, Rey carefully straightened along the stall, pressing her weary body into its cool surface. She wouldn’t be able to walk for a moment, she realized and she breathed deeply, her hands sliding up to press into the glass at her face.

                Behind her, she was vaguely aware of the knight almost racing through his shower, the scent of a shampoo, the flicker of water as he slicked it off his lean frame. But she couldn’t leave the protection of the shower wall, couldn’t force her legs to be sturdy. She could only breathe heavily into the surface under her palms as her body calmed, as the tremors went away.

                As Ben finished and then returned to her.                 

                The shower turned off, rousing her, and his hands wrapped around her arms and shoulders carefully, his grip cool from the water. “Come,” he said to her quietly and he eased her away from the stall, reaching to open the clear door into the rest of the refresher.

                She staggered out weakly, shivers of her climax still streaking up and down her legs and pelvis.

                He pulled another towel off the shelf and wrapped it around her, strong hands warming her as he slipped around to face her. Looming over her, he dropped his eyes to her towel clad figure before bringing them to meet her own.

                Trembling, she lifted her head. “Take me to bed,” she whispered, her heart pounding.

                Eyebrows lifting faintly at her words, he recovered within a moment to nod. “Yes,” he agreed, voice deepening even more than his usual timbre, his dark eyes fixing on her for a long moment.

                Then his hand slipped low, catching hers and allowing her free one to clasp the towel to her chest, before leading her out of the refresher silently, the light dimming behind their departing figures.

 

** Next Chapter: Book Three: The Balance - Chapter Twenty-Nine: **

She held that specific dream close to her heart for she had thought then that _that_ was what it would feel like; the day that it happened, that she finally allowed someone into her body, she would also unwittingly allow him into her heart.

She had loved that man that night in her dream. And now she was afraid that she would love this man as well once he took her.

 


	30. Chapter Twenty-Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Smut Year!! Sorry it took me so long to update but I had a very fun weekend with family and friends leading into the New Year. But I promised you guys a smutty New Year and BY GOD I AM DELIVERING!!
> 
> Thank you for the comments and kudos! I'm going to respond to them now and I'm going to try to update the links to Book III on my profile either today or tomorrow!
> 
> Enjoy!!

**Book Three – The Balance**

 

Chapter Twenty-Nine:

 

                The walk from the refresher room through the living suite and to his bedroom door seemed to take forever as Rey found herself experiencing a myriad of emotions; need, desire for him, for his body, for his embrace as she watched him walk ahead of her, still damp and nude. For his strength and comfort in this place.

                Apprehension, the beginnings of panic; what if she showed just how inexperienced she was and left him wanting?

                And finally, _fear_ ; what if he didn’t want her anymore after this? What if he decided after tonight that he had made the wrong decision and left her alone here, trapped and captive, always at the mercy of the Supreme Leader until he finally changed her or killed her? What if he-

                His fingers curling slightly, he slowed and came to a stop, turning to look at her with a slight frown. Blinking in confusion, his lips parting, he dropped her hand as she met his gaze, as she felt that same ripple of fear grow the slightest bit stronger.

                “Stop,” he ordered her, his voice harsh in the night and in the silence of his bedroom. And as she breathed in shakily, he said it again, his tone softening as he moved toward her, his hands rising to her cheeks.

                She felt her eyes slip closed as he cradled her face in his palms, long fingers dragging along her hairline and across her ears, down to the sides of her neck.

              “Everything I have done up until now has been for you,” he murmured to her, his breath warm along her lips. “I have not abandoned you.”

                Her brow lifted at his words, visualizing his face behind her closed eyes. “I know. I know-”

                “And I won’t do it now. I can’t hurt you,” he said and those words were so familiar that she knew what would follow, heard them in an eerie callback to her dreams, to their shared moments. “I won’t.”

                “Then don’t,” she whispered.

                His mouth was close enough to hers that she wanted them then; to touch her lips to his, to taste him on her tongue, to reach for more of him. He exhaled softly against her, fingertips dancing lightly across her cheeks and she knew he was watching as he caressed her, was running his eyes over her skin and the curves of her face.

                Then his hands fell away, settling on the towel wrapped around her.

                She had come from the refresher in another towel though he had come naked. Lowering her head slightly, her eyes remained shut as she felt his fingers pull hers free from the towel, loosening it slowly before ridding her body of it. His room was cold, gooseflesh immediately breaking out across her skin as he let the towel drop beside her feet.

                Moving slowly, his hands slid down lightly, fingertips tracing and tickling as he ran them down her ribs and over her hips.  

                Rey’s arms hung at her sides loosely, feeling his touch, feeling his hands drift. He was bending as well, leaning into her for she suddenly felt his heat near, close, though he was still speckled with drops from their shared shower. She instinctively shifted to move closer, to draw his heat into herself, to warm her cold skin.

                His hands slid around to her rear, slipping over her curves with a tantalizingly slow caress, unhurried.

                Turning her head slightly, she tilted it along her shoulder, her eyes still closed as her hands cautiously lifted to settle on his biceps. His skin was hot to the touch; she didn’t understand how he did it but she wanted more of it. Sighing, she curled her fingers along his arms, her nails reflexively digging in.

                A sound left his mouth as he bent into her, his wet hair curling along his temples and her brow as he breathed against her cheek, as his lips dragged along her skin with a silent need.

                Then his hands slipped down her rear to the back of her thighs and she hadn’t known that was one of her erogenous areas until his hands were there, sliding long fingers down. Her hands slid upward along his biceps, clawing into them and his broad shoulders, her head pressing into his mouth yearningly.

                Wrapping his fingers into the part of her thighs, he squeezed the skin there for a moment, bent into her. Then he suddenly hefted her up against his hard body, his hands parting her legs to hook around his waist, his grip tight on her skin.

                She felt a hitched breath escape her as she found herself in his arms and he had done this to her before, weeks before when he had asked her to come to his room just for the night. Her mouth opened along his cheek at finding him so close, at feeling his hardness at the junction of her thighs.

                Anchoring her to him, his hands lifted to cradle her easily to his chest and he turned, putting her back toward the bed so he could face it.

                In the moonlit room, he crossed the distance to his bed and then lowered slightly at its edge, a hand leaving her back to urge her legs to uncurl from his waist.

                Reaching backward blindly, she felt a leg fall onto the surface of the bed before allowing herself to unwind the other. She slowly settled onto her knees, finding balance before finally loosening the fingers she had curved into his skin. Even as she opened her eyes to look up at him, she saw the moon crescents she had left in his flesh and felt her gaze fall on them, reaching to run her fingers over them to soothe the light punctures.

                He barely seemed to even realize them though and she supposed it was because his body was riddled with so many other scars. She had seen them before, weeks before in the refresher when they had bathed together after he had returned from Snoke.

                _I added to them. I added to these scars._

                Blinking rapidly, she moved to touch them, to trace her hands across the raised skin and the jagged lines of his scars, the one she had gifted him with Luke’s lightsaber. “Can I-” she whispered and she fell silent for a moment, feeling as if her voice was too loud in their silence. “I want to touch you.”

                His brow crinkled up slightly, his eyes narrowing as he looked at her. “You are touching me.”

                Her light eyes dropped at his words, trailing from his own to his mouth and then lower, dipping down the flat planes of his chest with the crisscrossed scars. So many, she marveled, her gaze caressing them as if they were fingers. Bowing her head, she followed the scars down to his stomach and then finally down to where his hardness stood erect. “I want to touch all of you,” she said, amending her earlier demand.

                His lips parted, his breath quickening now that she was focused. He swallowed faintly, his chest rising under her palms, stiffening as she trailed a nail across a raised scar. “You can do anything you want to me,” he murmured, his stare fixed on her fiercely.

                Her eyes darted up to meet his. “Anything?” she asked softly, and she saw the immediate effect that her words had on him; his own eyes fluttered slightly, becoming heavy as if under a spell as he bent his head toward her, his mouth hovering over hers.

                “Anything,” he whispered.

                Lifting her mouth toward his but knowing that he would still refuse her kiss, she instead breathed him in, her own lips parting as she lowered her hand.

                He was hard as she took him into her palm, as she slowly wrapped her hand around his width. Her touch brought him to clearly shiver under her other hand still pressed to his chest and his eyes slid closed as she lightly trailed her fingertips along the underside of his shaft. Gauging his reaction, she slid her hand back down his length, wrapping her fingers around him at the base and then slipping up to his head with a bit more pressure.

                His head dropped, forehead pressing to hers weakly as she repeated the motion, as she turned her brow along his to watch her actions. How easily one could bring a man to his knees, to helplessness, she reflected as she slid up and down his shaft, as she steadily increased her movements. His breath had quickened, a low groan leaving his mouth in her ear and never had she heard a more arousing sound. Her lips parted further, her hand moving faster, her tongue curling up in her mouth as she found herself wanting to do something else to him though she’d never attempted it. The thought blossomed and she felt the apprehension rise inside of her again as she contemplated it, as she felt him lift a hand to clutch at the nape of her neck heavily, hungrily.

                Slanting a look at him and finding him completely at her mercy, she slowly curled lower on her knees, her hand trailing down his chest to his abdomen and then to his hip to hold herself.

                And she was sure that he held his breath in the moment between her hand slowing on him and her mouth opening to take him in.

                He inhaled in a hiss, his entire form stiffening almost painfully.

                She released him momentarily, attempting to read his body, to read his thoughts. He was a whirl of chaos from the bit she caught, his mind and body both, and she frowned slightly before repeating the motion. His hand on the back of her neck needed what she was doing to him though, and she took him in further, feeling his hardness on her tongue. He felt wonderful, she realized, her fingers digging into his hip, her hand following her mouth as she slid up his length, as she swirled her tongue around him before slipping back down and taking in as much of him as she could.

                His hand lifted to tangle in her hair, to grasp her head so tightly she worried momentarily that he would hurt her. And as she slid back up his length, she tilted her head to look up at him just as his dropped and he opened his eyes to look down at her.

                She released him slowly, carefully, trying to read his eyes as she licked her lips clean.

                A hard breath left him, his frame almost heaving, and he merely shut his eyes tightly and shook his head. “No,” he murmured and he pulled back from her slightly, falling free of her hands. “I was wrong.”

                Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach as she straightened on her knees, as she looked at him tremulously. “What?”

                Instead, he bent and took hold of her by the waist and hips, yanking her forward and off her knees, her back and shoulders falling back to the bed abruptly.

                “I was wrong,” he murmured and he bent over her suddenly prone and surprised form, his hands taking hold of her wrists and pushing them down to the bed. “You can’t do anything you want to me, and you absolutely cannot do that to me. Not right now, not when I want you as much as I do.” He shook his head of dark waves to himself, his hands moving distractedly. “I won’t last.”

              _“What?”_ Blinking, Rey kept her arms at her side where he had pressed them to the bed, a frown crossing her brow. “What are you _on_ about-”

               His hands took hold of her hips again, pulling her toward the edge of the bed and causing her to flail at the sheets for some sort of balance. Dropping to his knees on the floor at the edge of the bed, he lowered his hands to her thighs and took hold of them, calming her with a softening touch though he wrapped his hands under them and yanked her down even more.

                And then his mouth was on her and she threw her head back into the surface of the bed, a cry leaving her mouth. It was unfair, she thought in the next moment, panting as his tongue slipped through her lips below and circled the center of her, just as she had done to him moments before. Just as wonderfully, just as cruelly. She gasped, her breath tearing from her, her hips responding mindlessly as she attempted to pull away and push into his mouth at the same time.

                His arms tightened on her thighs, his hands splaying to press down into her skin firmly.

                But she couldn’t calm herself; she could barely _think_. Writhing across his bed, she took hold of his rumpled sheet and curled it into her fist, her back arching off the soft surface as he pressed his mouth to her and trailed his tongue along the very core of her. She was ready to start calling for deities and for the Force to help her as he hummed into her skin, as he thrust his tongue into her.

                _I’m going to die here._

                Releasing a thigh, he uncurled a hand and ran a finger along her center as he closed his lips around the small nub that caused her to buck like a wild animal. Then he was pushing the finger into her, slipping inside easily as she wet him fully. Trailing his tongue over her, he inserted another finger as he had in the refresher and curled up deep within.

                A hard moan left her lips as she flailed, as she slapped a palm into the bed at her side helplessly. She wanted her release and she wanted it to go on forever and how was she ever going to function again outside of his bedroom? How would she ever even be able to leave it and not think of it in fleeting thoughts and moments, in the midst of daydreaming?

                His fingers separated slightly, stretching her, and she felt her hips jump at the sensation. She knew why he did it, what it would mean, for he had done it before in her dream. She held that specific dream close to her heart for she had thought then that _that_ was what it would feel like; the day that it happened, that she finally allowed someone into her body, she would also unwittingly allow him into her heart.

                She had loved that man that night in her dream. And now she was afraid that she would love this man as well once he took her.

                His hand slowed, his touch becoming gentle.

                Oh. He had heard.

                “I feel the same,” he murmured against her sensitive skin and she was overwhelmed by how terrible his timing was and yet how perfect it was as well. How he would move to relieve her doubts while bringing her body to anguish.

                “I just…I-” she uttered, her body twisting disloyally, her thoughts flying in so many different directions that she almost felt mentally drawn and quartered.

                He rose from his knees over her, his fingers still deep within, his other hand coming to rest on the bed between her arm and her waist.

                As she met his eyes hazily, she shook her head across the bed, her heart pounding. “I’m afraid,” she murmured to him, her chest lifting and falling as he slipped his fingers out and then thrust them back in slowly, deftly. Her eyelashes fluttered at the sensation, her mind threatening to shut down altogether.

                He sighed without slowing his motions, without giving her reprieve. “I’ve been afraid from the moment I brought you here,” he whispered and his face fell slightly, his broad shoulders shifting wearily.

                Her hand came off the bed, lifting to clasp his face even as his fingers distracted her below. “Just be here with me. Right now,” she said and her eyes slipped closed in a moment of utter sensitivity, his fingers causing her to push her hips into his hand. “ _’Not because of where we come from or what side we’re on. You. Just you. Outside of everything,_ ’” she whispered, echoing his words from earlier in the refresher, before he had made her come apart on his fingers. Just as he was doing now.

                He responded to her movements and her words, turning his head to watch as his fingers slipped back in, as he rubbed his thumb over her center to her complete dismay. It was as if he knew every which way to weaken her, to bring her to practically beg. To have her fall apart under his hand alone. Lowering himself into her, he allowed her to wrap her arms around his shoulders, pushing her face into his neck as his fingers worked between her thighs.

                His body brought her comfort, his weight and his breadth, the wave in his hair and the scent of cedar along his skin, concentrated in the pulse at his neck. Every part of him pacified her as he thrust his fingers into her, as his thumb took up a mesmerizing rhythm that had her pushing her hips into his hand even as she pulled him down into her embrace.

                “Please,” she whispered into his ear as she felt her climax near, as she closed her eyes tightly and buried her face deeper into his neck.

                He inserted a third finger, causing her to gasp into his collarbone, bringing him to groan lowly, desperately, against her ear as his thumb circled her, as he worked her center almost roughly.

                Her arms tightened around his shoulders, fingers clawing as she felt her body surge, as she felt herself respond to him. She responded to everything that was him, she realized dimly, futilely. From the very beginning, from her very dreams, she had always reacted to him almost chaotically. And now that it was real, she had no one to blame but herself and him as well, the two of them; the Force Bond for bringing them together, the bond that had been a terror and had somehow become a blessing. A moan left her lips at the thought, at the rising need inside of her as her pelvis matched his every stroke, faltered under his thumb.

                But his embrace was a comfort and she realized even then that she was safe in his arms even if she was unsafe in the world around them.

                “Leave that behind,” he whispered and he tilted his head, nipping at her ear and brushing his lips along that duplicitous spot on her neck as his fingers thrust inside of her again and again. “Leave that behind-”

                A cry began to work its way up her throat as she felt her climax rise and she dragged him even closer, pleading into his neck for release, for mercy, until he granted it to her. And then the cry came loose, leaving her mouth and causing her to arch into him, to pull at him frantically.

                He tried to slip from her embrace though, rising away from her and lifting his hand off the bed to pull at her tight grasp around his neck. “Let go. Rey. Let go. I need you to let go-”

                _No_ , she shook her head, still reaching for him as her pelvis convulsed with waves of release, her body quivering for him.

                Grimacing, he left his neck and shoulders trapped in her embrace as he moved, as he dragged his fingers through her center for a moment before leaving her.

                She immediately felt the loss, her hips shifting toward him, craving, as tremors shifted through her form, as she called aloud into the darkness of his room.

                But he was shifting, running his fingers over his length, the same fingers he had dragged through her center and lips, coating himself in her wetness before sliding his body between her legs.

                She was still halfway gone when he lowered his hand to her hip to steady her and pushed his hardness into her. She barely felt him through the lessening waves of her climax, her breath still escaping her. But as he pushed in, she felt herself slowly come back down and a soft moan left her lips as she felt him deep inside, as she felt him spread her to welcome him. Her arms tightened even more around his neck, half in the throes of her release, half in expectation. He buried his face into her neck, his hips carefully pushing into hers, his hardness becoming difficult to take even as her orgasm waned.

                He cursed softly into the soft curve of her neck, pulling his length out before pushing back in slowly, gently.

                Now she felt the strain, his entry a bit more than she knew. But as he pushed into her, she widened her legs around his waist, pushed her hips upward to accept him.

                He exhaled in soft relief though his hips continued to move between her thighs, his wide shoulders and neck trapped in her embrace.

                It would have been easier if she had let him go as he’d asked, she realized dimly and she shook her head against his blindly, her body still pleading for him. But she hadn’t wanted to; she had needed someone to hold when she had climaxed.

                He pushed farther than he had before and she wondered how much more of him she could take before he finally stopped and settled, his body falling heavily on hers.

                And never had something felt so right to her.

                He swallowed in her ear, his breath coming rapidly, almost too fast. “I can’t tell,” he whispered into her ear, shaking his head slightly. “You have walls up, I can’t tell-”

                A soft moan drifted from her, her arms tightening around him to the point of suffocation. “You’re perfect,” she groaned helplessly. “You’re perfect-“

                His breath left him in a hard exhalation and his weight settled even more on her, his hardness deep inside of her, his body finally claiming her fully.

                And she knew it would happen. She had sensed it only moments before and now that she cradled him inside of her and outside as well, she felt her body brimming over with emotion.

                _It’s happening. It’s happening and I can’t stop it-_

                “Don’t,” he murmured painfully, his low voice tight. “Don’t stop it. I can’t stop it either-” And he groaned into her neck as he pulled his hips up and away, his length slowly slipping out of her.

                She felt his loss only for a moment before he thrust back into her slowly, filling her deeply and bringing back that same sense of completion.

                _I’ll never be the same again after this._

                Readjusting his hips, he pulled out once more and then slipped back in, a soft groan sliding out of him almost thankfully. “You feel-”

                She nodded blindly, her head falling back along the bed even as she kept him trapped to her neck.

                Groaning again, he pulled out one last time, a slow withdrawal before returning to her with one hard thrust. And then the thrusts came just a bit faster, exquisitely, as his hips fell into a rhythm, as his length became not only easier to take but something that she came to need. Her arms loosened from his neck as he pushed into her, his hips shoving her across the bed bit by bit and now she understood, now she felt the want, the desire. She arched into him as his elbows fell to the bed, his hands curling to dig into it on either side of her; as he shoved his head into the curve of her neck, his mouth searching out her skin and pulse almost hungrily. His body bowed into her arc, his lean waist and broad torso the perfect size for her to wind her legs around, for her smaller frame to hide under. He enveloped her completely, arms bent and holding her in between as if to protect her, his hips sliding against hers heavily, his hardness slipping in and out hard and then soft, wet.

                Her breath left her softly and then in a moan, her brow drawing. She wanted to lift her hands to his hair, to his face, but he kept her so tightly cradled that she could barely move her arms, his biceps digging into them on either side. Reaching, she lifted them along his ribs and waist, her hands pressing into the skin of his back. And as his thrusts became harder, as his body tightened, she clawed her fingers and dug her nails into his equal parts smooth and scarred skin, latching on as desire swept through her quivering body.

                A hiss of a breath trailed from him, his forehead dropping to the bed just beside her head, his lips dragging across the curve of her shoulder as his lean body shuddered.

                Her eyes fluttered at the reaction, at how his entire form seemed to fall still with the same shiver of ecstasy that had risen through her at having him so deep inside.

                _You like pain._

               He whispered something into her shoulder, something soft and riddled with such pure desire that it brought the yearning out in her as well, the words leaving his lips and hovering around them in his deep tone. But she couldn’t catch his words and a second later she couldn’t even think to. She had just climaxed twice in the last few minutes, in his refresher and here in his very bed, she thought dimly as he rocked her once more, as his hips began to move again but now came hard and wild with his thrusts. How was it possible that she could feel the beginnings of another begin to rise-

                She cried out on a particularly hard thrust, the sound echoing in the silence of the room, hanging over them as he remained embedded deep inside her for a long moment, moving to inch deeper, to take just that little bit more of her wantonly.

                One of his arms straightened, reaching down blindly to grasp her wrist from his back and lifting it to the nape of his neck for her to clasp.

                She frowned faintly, not able to understand a thing he did, her center beginning to hum again in yearning as he merely rocked his hips against her, still buried deep and reaching.

                Having freed himself, his hand shifted down her arm to the bone of her shoulder, slipping along the slope of her wing before sliding in to her breast.

                _Too much. Too much,_ she thought wildly, her body torn between his deep possession of her and the delicate trail of his palm, of his fingers lightly passing over her nipple, his thumb flicking it as his hand cupped her fully. Her jaw dropped open, her head falling back on the bed and pushing into it, her body arching into his palm, her hips twisting into his pelvis demandingly. She wanted more of him, every little bit more, and she wanted him to stay exactly where he was for as long as she could have it, as long as he would give her of himself.

                He pushed her hip back down to the bed almost brutally though, rocking deeply into her still with a curve of his hips, and he was so much stronger than her, heavier. A small cry broke from her, her torso curving under his, her hips reaching to beg more of him, to take him in fully and tighten, her wetness beginning to dampen her thighs. His breathing had quickened with his thrusts earlier and now his touch was just that bit rougher with the clench of her body under and around him. His bent arm slid under her neck, his palm cradling her head for him to press his face into, his mouth dragging up the arch of her neck as she murmured aloud incoherently, pleading, his other hand returning to her breast to clasp, tug, and pinch as he pushed into her below, suspended.

                Nearly desperate to have him move again, to stop him from punishing her so perfectly, she lifted her head to his shoulder and bit into it viciously.

                A hard groan came from his mouth, his lips parting along her collarbone in surprise. And then, with a growled curse against her skin, he yanked clear out of her grip, releasing her roughly.

                Rey fell flat to the bed surface, blinking in confusion at finding him gone. And a moment later he had pulled out of her and she felt his absence so clearly that her entire body quaked in need. She sat up reflexively, drawing her legs in but he had only straightened at the foot of the bed.

                Breathing harshly, he took several seconds to compose himself, his hardness standing erect and glistening wetly in the moonlight.

                From her, she realized dimly, her legs curling in even more to somehow hide the evidence. He was wet from her, and staring at him then, from his face to his scarred but massive frame, he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her entire life.

                With a tightening to his lips, he bent and took hold of her legs once more, hands wrapping around her thighs.

                Rey’s heart jumped into her throat, half startled but suddenly fully aroused again. Then he dragged her back to the foot of the bed toward him, curling his arms around her thighs and lifting her hips off the bed to enter her once more, easily now, keeping her spread wide before him.

                Her body quivered instinctively at finding him back so deep within her, her back arching across the bed, her head falling back weakly. His grip was harder than it had been before, forceful and brutal, and he locked her legs tightly between his biceps and forearms, trapping her. She realized immediately that he gave her nowhere to go, barely an inch to move. Settling powerlessly, she could only breathe and feel his thrusts as he took up again in earnest, as he pushed into her roughly and then gently, long strokes of his hips and short, hard plunges. Her lips parted as his hips met hers, as he thrust into her so fully, so completely; as she allowed him weakly. She was going to be sore in the morning, she thought blindly, her eyes sliding shut and her head falling to the side as she let him have his way with her, as he slid in and out of her effortlessly, fiercely.

                _I won’t be able to walk in the morning and I’m going to relish every minute of it-_

                His breathing became heavier with his thrusts, his arms clasping her so tightly she knew she would wake up with bruises on her calves and the back of her thighs.

                _What a strange place to have bruises…oh-_

                He twisted his hips slightly with his thrust and suddenly she felt the beginning climb of a climax, felt herself reach out across the bed mindlessly. Her breath left her, her body curving with desire, and his name left her lips pleadingly.

                “Ben. _Ben_ …”

                He didn’t respond from between her legs, his body moving rhythmically and then turning wild, hard. Every thrust of his hips pushed him deeper into her somehow; the smallest bit but just enough for her body to desire him and then _crave_ him.

                His real name came faster from her lips, matching each of his thrusts until it was all she could whisper, all she could moan.

                Until his real name was all he understood.

                She was so close, her body beginning to flame, beginning to move shamelessly with each thrust, to meet him and clutch him inside so deeply, so tightly, that he trembled from each clench. He still moved somehow, even as she flailed for something to hold onto, for something to center her. But every thrust dismantled her, diminished her control, and she found herself clutching at her own body; a hand slipping down to the part of her that begged for release, the other lifting to clutch at her breast as he thrust into her and pushed her roughly across the bed.

                His breathing became uneven as she cupped her breast, as she turned her head away blindly; as her hand dipped to feel him pushing in and out of her, fingertips brushing his wet shaft as he thrust into her. And when she was sure that she couldn’t feel anything more, that her body couldn’t take anymore, his voice was in her head and it was just as arousing as his physical body.

                His tone came in whispers, half conscious words and thoughts, mostly emotion. And the emotion there was desperate; he was lost in her completely, in her body, in her gasps and thoughts floating in their shared bond. He was lost in his own head, relishing every sensation he drew from her and every shiver he felt from her. And he was barely hanging on as he watched her clutch her breast and caress herself rhythmically even as he thrust into her just below her hand.

                He was going to break but he was unwilling to do so until she climaxed first and it was turning into a _battle_.

                Gasping, breathing heavily with each thrust, she felt a grimace cross her brow. “Ben-”

                And his curse again, hard and desperate, as his thrusts became rougher, as he practically pushed her body across the bed. As he felt everything she felt, as he felt his own release close at hand but knew he would come just as soon as she did, just as hard and just as intensely.

                “Let go, Rey,” he murmured tightly, his low voice carrying her and arousing her just as much as his thrusts. “Let go.”

                Now wincing, circling her fingers around the sensitive nub just above his thrusts, she arched her back as each thrust drove her.

                And just when she thought that she would be forever suspended in this painful limbo, he shoved into her so roughly that she felt herself splinter apart in white blindness. Her shout broke the silence in his room, her voice renting the air and falling away helplessly, her entire body stiffening.

               He continued to thrust but as she stiffened around him, he joined her in release, his hips pushing tightly against the underside of her thighs, burying himself so deeply inside of her that she was sure she felt him come at the very core of herself, warmth spreading within.

                Her voice left her in gasps, in calls, her fingers almost pinching her breast and clutching herself below tightly in an attempt to calm the convulsions.

                Another curse left his lips, long and drawn out, and he quaked within her. But a second later, his hand reached out, releasing a thigh to snatch her wrist tightly, yanking her hand from her center. Breathing heavily, grimacing as he continued to thrust gently to empty himself inside of her, he brought her hand to his lips and took her fingers into his mouth, licking and sucking her wetness clean from her fingertips with a soft exhalation.

                She almost died, watching him, her breast rising and falling beneath her other palm.

                This was what he had felt earlier when she had taken him into her mouth, when she had slowed to look at him, this very thing; a sight so delicious and so arousing that she couldn’t take it, especially now in the midst of her climax.

                He pulled her fingers from his mouth, a canine scraping, his tongue lingering on a tip as he drew back, his grip on her wrist loosening.

                A sigh left her as he lowered her hand to her stomach, as he loosened his other arm to release her remaining captive thigh. He was still deep inside, pulsing his hips gently against hers to ride out his own climax and the sensation was soft, calming, as she bent her legs at the edge of the bed, her own hips lifting to meet every one of his measured, fading thrusts.

                Until it was just the two of them in stillness, in silence, though they both still breathed heavily.

                Bending over her slowly, he lowered his hands to the bed on either side of her head and looked at her hazily, his chest rising and falling deeply. “Did I hurt you?” he asked quietly, dark eyes training on her in the soft darkness.

                She shook her head though she was sure that every part of her would be sore in the morning. “No,” she answered in a whisper. And she lifted a hand, her palm cool on his hot skin before she trailed it down along his shoulder where she had bitten him. “Did I hurt _you_?”

                He frowned at her in dazed confusion before understanding entered his stare and he ducked his head to laugh quietly, dark waves falling around his cheeks and brushing the side of her thumb as she traced the hard curve of his shoulder. “No. No, you didn’t hurt me,” he murmured, his deep voice soft and humming, and he sighed again with a slight shiver streaking through him, his member twitching inside of her and causing her to startle slightly.

                “Are you sure?” she asked hoarsely, her eyes drifting to his locks as they caught the moonlight and turned silver. He was painfully beautiful bent over her, the light bathing him softly.

                Lifting off the bed slightly, he reached up and took hold of the hand she had pressed to his shoulder and he turned it, pressing his mouth to the pulse in her wrist. “Yes, yes, I’m sure,” he said with a deep exhalation, his words warm on her skin, his cheek smooth as she uncurled her fingers and trailed them across his cheekbone and temple. His eyes slipped closed at the gesture, lips hovering over her wrist still, breathing lightly now as she caressed him. “You just…rushed it doing that. I’d hoped to take longer with you.”

                Rey’s eyebrows drew together, her gaze caught to his mouth on her wrist, to the slant of his eye, the perfect profile of his face. “Oh,” she murmured, blinking. “I…I didn’t…I don’t really know why I did it. I just-”

                He laughed again, the sound thrumming through the sensitive skin of her wrist. Then he lowered her hand back down to her chest and slipped sideways, trailing a fingertip down the valley of her breasts distractedly. “You did it because you thought I was punishing you,” he murmured and his dark eyes darted to meet her wide ones, finger light and teasing. “I heard it.”

                She swallowed, remembering then through the haziness of lust. “Weren’t you?” she asked.

                His face remained blank in the long silence it took to respond. “No,” he replied at last and he lifted his hand away, dropping it back to the bed at her side and then leaning down, pressing his lips to her shoulder in the exact spot where she had bitten him on his. “You’ve been punished enough here,” he said softly against her skin, waves of hair tickling her cheek lightly. “But now I know what you think you can take. If you give me the chance, I’ll do it to you again to prove that you can take more.” And his words caused a shiver to streak through her, her center tightening involuntarily around him still inside of her.

                The reflex brought a soft groan from his throat, his lips dragging across her collarbone.

                Then, very slowly, he began to pull out of her, his hips withdrawing.

                She felt him slip out gently, realizing in the darkness that she didn’t want him to go. She wanted his warmth, wanted her slickness to always ease his return. She turned her jaw into his head of waves as he fell free of her and he remained close still, his rising chest pressing into her hands as she held them curled to her breasts.

                Then he moved, sitting up just enough to slip his hands under her hips, to wrap her up in his arms.

                A slightly shrill sound left her mouth as he hefted her up and off the bed, as she quickly flung her legs around his waist, her hands scrambling to clutch at his shoulders and back. There was an air of mischief surrounding him as he straightened, as he stepped away from the bed with her cradled in his hard arms as she flailed.

                Then as she clasped him well enough, he lowered her to the floor slowly, her body sliding down along his temptingly.

                “You could’ve just asked me to get up,” she grumbled crossly as she came to stand on her own two feet.

                His brow arched. “I enjoyed that much more,” he whispered, moving to draw her toward him.

               But she loosened his grip on her, stepping away. “I’m sure,” she stated, shooing his reaching hands away. As they released her and fell away, she tilted her head to toss him a cheeky glance. “Now if you will excuse me, I have need of the refresher. I’m…sticky all over.”

                His face remained blank at her words but she saw the flare of interest in his stare nonetheless.

                Turning her head away as she circled around him to leave the room, she was well aware of his eyes on her back and then her rear, and a small smile curled the edges of her lips.

 

                When she returned to the bedroom, he stood at his windows, his arms crossed over his chest as he looked out over the dense woods below stretching out for miles. She hesitated in the doorway, feeling a bit out of place then as she stood naked, as she ran her eyes down his nude frame as well.

                He was beautiful.

                He turned his head to look toward her, his brow drawn low over his eyes and she immediately straightened, feeling as if she had been caught. But the frown lessened as he caught sight of her and his arms dropped away from his chest, his head lifting.

                “What were you just thinking?” she asked him almost inaudibly from the darkness of the living suite, hovering just outside of the doorway.

                His brow softened, eyes hooded. “It doesn’t matter,” he stated quietly and he motioned her in with an outstretched hand.

                She moved in through the doorway, falling into the moonlight, and she also turned her head to look out into the woods, to the sky overhead and the moons shining brilliantly above. “It matters to me,” she said, feeling more comfortable looking out than meeting his intense stare.

                He paused for a long moment, his hand falling to his side. “Then we’ll discuss it. But not tonight. Tonight is not for that,” he murmured and he looked back out through the transparisteel windows, the frown returning.

                Lowering her head slightly, Rey nodded at his words. His mind was closed in the night, in the darkness, his mental voice silent. She would never be able to delve deep enough to search out his thoughts then and his physical body was distracting enough as it was.

                With a soft sigh, she entered the room fully, moving toward him.

                He turned his head toward her slightly, eyes shifting downward blindly as she neared. And then his eyes slid closed as she curled her body into his, as she pressed her mouth to the prominent line of his collarbone, her hands lifting to his chest. “Then we won’t talk about it tonight.”

                Exhaling deeply, his hand darted up to take hold of her jaw, his thumb dragging across the hollow beneath her cheekbone and dragging her close, his other hand winding around her waist. “Not tonight. I have other plans for tonight.” And he curled his fingers into her hair, pulling her head aside to bury his face into her neck, deeply inhaling her scent. “I want you again and again for however long you will give yourself to me.”

                And as his mouth trailed along her sensitive skin, she thought then that she would give herself over for as long as he would have her.

                And wasn’t that just the problem.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Thirty: **

He lowered his eyes to her bare shoulder, staring at it in the darkness. Even with such tanned skin, she was bright and beautiful in the moonlit night. He frowned, uncertain and hesitant, before slowly reaching a hand out and circling his hand around her slender arm. He needed to touch her then, see how real she was and how true his memories were of the last few hours, the last few _weeks_.

 


	31. Chapter Thirty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooooo! I use ONE very bad word in this chapter (but was told by my beta that it actually made the line like a 1000x hotter and I trust her, LOL!) besides all the smut. I'm telling you guys, Book III is where the smut is. 
> 
> Thanks to all the lovely people that have checked out the soundtracks! I am pleasantly surprised because I know sometimes you get thrown out of wanting to check something out after reading. But I will say that I definitely thought Frida Sundemo's It's Ok fit reeeeeeally well with this so please go give it a listen if you have a chance!
> 
> Lastly, thank you for the comments, the kudos, the laughs! And the support. You really do make writing fanfiction an amazing thing. Thank you!

Chapter Thirty:

 

                He had been a fool.

                Awake in the middle of the night, he felt the words run through him, his thoughts brimming and spilling over. He always did this to himself; awakening in the night and thinking too much about…everything. About _everything_. And now, with her sleeping beside him, it was somehow even more severe.

                He had thought in having her that she would finally leave him, his thoughts, that he would be able to turn his mind from her and direct them back to their rightful path. But no, he had been mistaken and he didn’t even really know where he had faltered along the way. When he had initially brought her to the base? When she had resisted him her first day on the base?

                No. He had faltered when he had unconsciously gone to her, first seeking comfort during his recovery and then to infiltrate her dreams in anger, in arrogance. That’s where he had wavered, where he had weakened even as he had healed.

                And in the next moment he realized that he should have seen it coming. He had gone to her in their dreams, shared because of their bond, because of the incessant pull to her. He had been torn down to his very foundation with pain and need in the tank of bacta, and he had gone to her to salvage him. Instead, she had somehow left him wanting more, needing more. More relief, painlessness, patience. He had needed more of her every day in everything he had done even after she had given him as much as she could have. And now he questioned why he couldn’t leave her, why he could think of nothing else besides her?

                He was a damn fool.

                He now saw the small pitfalls he had succumbed to, the comforting words he had taken as gospel.

                _Do it. Get it out of your system. See it for what it is and rid yourself of her. Do as the Supreme Leader demands._

                And she had proven to be stronger, _better_ than him in the game she hadn’t even been aware she was a part of. She had been an unwitting seductress in his dreams, someone that he had gotten his hands on and had then bowed to in weakness when he had gone back for more. He would have crawled back to her over and over as he already had. How could he have thought after all their shared dreams that he would come out of that arena victorious?

                And she hadn’t even been aware of the fact that she’d been a gladiator. That was the worst part of it. He had taken advantage of her, of her limited knowledge and experience, and she had still emerged the victor in their combat. He almost found himself at a loss for words at how clearly she had won their battles, how easily she had overtaken him.

                How she did it still.

                She had bewitched him. That had to be the answer. She had bewitched him with her ability to use the Force, had made him see and feel things that he was somehow inexperienced against-

                _No._

                He shook his head to that a moment later, his eyes turning to her in the night. He lay sprawled on his back, his body feeling half spent, half electrified, and she slept on her side turned away from him, facing the moonlight drifting in through the windows. She had even taken his side of the bed but he couldn’t find it in him to complain when the moonlight was so much kinder to her than it could ever be to him.

                No, he thought returning to his earlier thought. She had been a novice _at most_ with the use of the Force before meeting him. Even on that snowy battlefield, she had drawn from him, had heard his offer to teach her and had used his words and his voice to center _herself_ , to use his very self to _best_ him. He had thought with all of his knowledge and all of his skills that he would emerge the clear champion. Then she had taken him to the snowy ground and had left him a distinct reminder across his face that his pride was the worst of his sins. She had demolished him and he had come away drawn to her.

                _Drawn_.

                He lowered his eyes to her bare shoulder, staring at it in the darkness. Even with such tanned skin, she was bright and beautiful in the moonlit night. He frowned, uncertain and hesitant, before slowly reaching a hand out and circling his hand around her slender arm. He needed to touch her then, see how real she was and how true his memories were of the last few hours, the last few _weeks_.

                She didn’t respond for a long moment, her breathing deep and even as she slept and he found it endearing that she could sleep so deeply in this place, that she could do it because she slept beside _him_. That she could feel safe with him when she was still a prisoner on this base.

                But then, as he trailed his fingers across her soft skin, she shifted. Coming slowly awake, she blinked against the pillow under her head and inhaled deeply, quietly, before moving and turning her head to peer at him sleepily over her shoulder.

                He had only let her sleep for a little over an hour and he already needed her again.

                “What’s wrong?” she asked him with that wonderfully Coruscant accent, her voice soft in the darkness.

                He did not reply, his dark eyes searching her face as she looked at him.

                How could one be so beautiful so effortlessly?

                Coming further awake, she turned on the bed to face him further, her eyes becoming focused. “What’s wrong?” she asked again, now seemingly worried as she searched his face.

                He merely shook his head, hating himself then as he remained silent.

                As she stared at him intently in the darkness of his room, he felt the tension, felt her gather herself. She was bothered suddenly, her frame stiffening, her eyes darting around the room to search it for something out of place as if a threat had to come to harm her. Or him. He felt her protectiveness for him rear its head and it surprised him, caused him to hesitate. How long had she been defensive for him and why hadn’t he noticed it sooner?

                But there was no one else in the room except the two of them and she frowned, bewildered, before turning her head to look at him again.

                He reached for her then, his hand slipping around her face to cup her jaw and cradle her head. Even as she melted into his palm reflexively, he pushed her bed sheet aside and rose above her, moving across his bed to loom over her.

                She gazed up at him in confusion, drawn to his warmth, drawn to _him_. But as he shifted, understanding washed over her face, her frown softening until it disappeared. She settled slowly under his tall frame, turning her nude body toward his.

                He found that he did not like that she seemed to settle herself to do what she may not have wanted, that she was giving herself up to him. He stopped, frowning deeply, searching her face and then reaching into her mind in search of answers, in search of more than this silent display.

                She hid from him for enough time that he wondered if their shared gaze had turned to blankness.

                _I don’t want someone who will just use my body until they’re spent, until they don’t want me anymore. Until they realize I have nothing to offer, nothing left to give. Nothing of me to change._

                Her words were ghostly in his head, eerie, rising and then ebbing as the high tide against a shore. Coming and going, climbing and falling. Was that how he sounded when he spoke to her, this strange stream of sound in consciousness, this range of emotion hidden in the pale stillness of the dark?

                _I don’t want that. I want you. But only as long as you want me. And then I want to be set free even if I’m hunted to the ends of the galaxy._

                Her voice came again in his head, hidden under the white noise, uncertain but desperate. He recoiled from her, his dark eyes peering into hers and searching even more intently, wishing to hear her again, to make sense of her thoughts even as they eluded him in her blank stare.

                But her eyes did not lie to him, did not evade his as she lay under him silently, her expression impassive but firm. She moved slightly and he felt one of her legs nudge his, seeking access to intertwine. He tilted his head at her request, hesitating before carefully shifting to nestle himself between her knees.

                Her eyelashes fluttered at finding him close again, her lips parting the smallest bit, and his eyes drifted down to them. Soft and pink, still. He swallowed faintly, caught by her mouth, aware of her so intently that he felt as if he buzzed with her magic.

                She moved again, sliding down across his bed the smallest bit, lifting her hips to his in the process. He came in contact with her once more, remembering then how hot she had been, how wet around him as he had entered her in a fever only hours before.

                He lowered a hand to the bed, pushing himself off her, feeling bereft as he separated from her warmth. A small sound came from her at his gesture, almost an inaudible complaint, but then he leaned his hip against her open thigh, reaching under her leg with his free hand. She frowned momentarily, silently questioning him, until his hand wound around her other thigh and took hold, dragging her down across the bed with one hard yank. She was pulled clear into him, lifted to his hips as he shifted. And she managed one soft gasp that became a moan as she exhaled, as he pushed into her again, seating himself deep within her with one hard thrust.

                She bucked around him, her face registering surprise to find him where she hadn’t even realized she’d needed him again. And then the wonder fell away to ecstasy, her eyes sliding shut, her mouth falling open. She loosed a soft whimper, her arms slipping across the bed at her sides as she searched for something, anything, to hold onto.

                He drew away from her slowly, sliding out slickly, before pushing forward again, claiming her silently. She was just as wet as she had been when he had first taken her, and she felt then the way she had earlier in the night; soft, willing.

                Perfect.

                A cry had broken from her at his second thrust, louder, yearning.

                He held her hips to his tightly, pulsing against her, seated deep inside as his gaze slipped up to take her entire form in, to capture such an erotic moment.

                She purred around him, her body vibrating within, her torso arching against the bed as her fingers finally found purchase in the tossed sheets of his bed. They wouldn’t support her, he reflected almost blindly, his eyes darting to her clenched fists, to the blanket clutched tightly in them. He could fuck her clear across the bed and that sheet would only follow her to the very edges as he claimed her again and again.

                And he found that he enjoyed the idea very much; he wanted to see her bend, wanted to see her surrender again, this woman who had clearly broken him from the very beginning, who had claimed him body and soul and hadn’t even regretted it. He gazed down at her, almost confused, caught within her body.

                Breathing heavily, she sensed his hesitation and her eyes shifted up to his silently.

                He questioned her in the hush of the night, in the darkness that seemed to clothe her and somehow left her untouchable. He’d had her and yet the very night itself could not conquer her, could not diminish her light. His body loomed over her, casting half of her in shadow but her breasts gleamed in the moonlight, pebbled and aroused, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. She was stunning, half-light, half-dark.

                A perfect balance.

                Shaking her head against the bed, Rey pushed the sheet in her fist down to the bed as she rose from the soft surface, still entwined around him, still cradling him deep inside her. One hand released the sheets to take hold of him by the back of the neck, fingers digging into the hair at his nape.

                The movement surprised him but the clamp of her hand on his neck rendered him immobile. He wanted her and hated her at the same time in that moment. He refused to name the emotion within himself, refused to name what it could very well be; the longing, the desperation, the _need_. She had made mention of it earlier in the night, had been afraid that she would fall for the person to take her for the first time. And then he had done it and he had felt the same; that she could make him fall. But he would not be that person. He couldn’t be. He could not be so _weak_ -

                She shifted around him, pulling herself free of him before pushing back up along his length, holding him deep within. His breath left him at the motion, at her wet heat wrapped around him so flawlessly, so perfectly. Her gaze was fixed as she stared at him, her fingers clutching him and threatening to reduce him to nothing in her arms, urging him to move to that ideal death.

                And he would go willingly, he realized then. This was how she did it, how she wielded her power. Yet she had not done this to him in the beginning and he had still fallen at her feet. She had held him prisoner since StarKiller base, yes, but she had not realized it and he had not understood it himself until he had begun to succumb to her. Even now, riding him as she slipped across his length to urge him to move, she was beautiful and terrible and yet he _wanted_ it. He had initiated the contact between them both from the very interrogation he had forced on her. How could he blame her, fault her, when he’d been the one to continuously falter against her in every subsequent attempt?

                “Stop thinking,” she whispered as she rose up against him, as she quivered around his member and brought a low groan from his lips. Her breath was warm across his mouth, her lips brushing his just enough to leave him wanting more of her, not enough to draw away from a kiss the way he had accustomed himself to do. “Stop thinking-”

                He seated her with a rough yank against his hips, pushing in deep and causing her to drop her head away from his mouth to cry out. He wanted her this way, wanted her to give in to him because he was tired of giving in to _her_ , of falling to his knees before her. He was tired of never being in control when it came to her.

                She cried out again sharply, her voice resounding in his bedroom as he thrust into her forcefully, as he bent her against his hard frame. He refused to be so weak, to be so fragile against someone such as her, someone who didn’t even understand-

                Rey’s hand in his hair tightened, the shiver racing down his back finely.

                _I don’t want to be weak anymore._

                Blinking blindly, Rey dropped her head to gaze at him, her lean body curled into his, submitting to him as he thrust into her again and again, her lips parted in need, in want. “Don’t think,” she gasped breathlessly as he shifted, as he bucked against her. “Don’t think-”

                She was right. He needed to stop thinking. He needed to stop needing her the way he did. He needed to stop-

                She gripped him tightly and brought his face down to hers, forced him to meet her. And his mouth found hers, met hers and held, his body stiffening against her as she tilted her head back in the midst of his thrust.

_Stop thinking._

                He frowned against her lips but found that he did not want to leave them, didn’t want to separate from her at all. And she knew it in that moment, her mouth falling open under his and consuming him just as she devoured his body, as she claimed him and burned him in fire and light, in somber darkness.

                In grayness.

                She deepened the kiss, swept her tongue against his as her hand held him captive, and he suddenly felt that he had been missing something his entire life. This kiss, this hold she had on him, he had deprived himself of this when he had left his uncle and gone to train under Snoke, when he had been seduced from the light. His body had never amounted to much in his eyes but a kiss, that was different. That held emotion, desire, need with that taste of seduction, still.

                Only now he was being seduced away from Snoke, away from the darkness. Not to the light; she was not light, she was not purity. She was something in between, something brilliant but heavy, something black but pale. He found he could not describe her as she moved for him, as she rode him in the darkness of his bedroom. He was blinded by her, was immobile in her grasp and frozen by her touch. But that icy touch burned him to the point that he felt like he was on fire, disintegrating from deep within.

                “Stop thinking!” she cried, breaking from their kiss, her brow furrowing in need as she thrust against him.

                He had given himself so entirely to her that he had even stopped moving, that he had allowed her to have her way with him. Now coming back to himself at her desperate cry, he took hold of her hips once more, rising to his knees between her thighs. She slid as he pulled her to him, as he pressed her to his pelvis to sheathe himself inside of her tightly. And as he thrust into her again and again, he felt her hand on his neck quiver, felt her fingers tremble.

                He wanted her to kiss him again. He had never wanted it, had never desired it of anyone he had taken to bed at any of the First Order outposts and bases to soothe the ache, the very human need. But here and now, he wanted her mouth on his, wanted to break deep inside of her and feel her come apart around him as well. He wanted to have her lips on his when he came inside of her.

                Her eyelashes fluttered, her eyes focusing as if he she had heard him. And then she was rising once more, using him, her hand at the nape of his neck, to lift off the bed to press her lean body against his. She felt the pain through his connection with her, felt the prickling at his neck as if he had pulled at the sensitive hairs at the base of hers. But the feeling merely made her tighten her grip, made him tilt his head backward over her fingers in something close to ecstasy as pain shifted across his features, along his very form like lightning.

                Releasing the bed sheet, she wound her other arm around his neck and slid up onto his hard body, pulsing her hips below to ride him, depending solely on him to support her weight.

                He was more than capable, his arms solid, his shoulders broad enough for her to clutch. And for a long moment, all he did was hold her in his arms, hold her body as she moved up and down along his length, as she used him to aid her. He settled on his knees, feeling her legs curl around his waist and somehow she still moved, riding him almost effortlessly. He bowed his head, pressed his face to her shoulder, burying himself into her skin to hide, to allow her to overcome him.

                But she turned her head to his, dragged a hand to his face and urged him to lift his head away from her shoulder to look at her, to meet her lips again. He was caught off-guard, surrendering to her helplessly, and her mouth on his urged him on, her hips shifting along his and bleeding him of everything he was.

                He would have nothing left to give, he realized desperately, as he let her have her way with him. She was consuming him body and soul, bringing him to ash with the mere sound of her moan in his mouth. What could he give her if she took everything from him? And what would he be if she stripped him of everything, of _everything_? What would he be left with if she reduced him to tatters, to nothingness on the wind?

                With a groan, he wrapped his arms around her slender waist and dragged her down against him tightly, holding her to him, forcing her to stop moving, to give him a moment to think, just to _think_. And she was so warm, so wet, absolutely perfect surrounding him as she stilled in his embrace.

                Breaking from the kiss, he pulled his head back and opened his eyes to look at her blindly.

                She returned the stare, her lips bruised, her heart pounding in her chest against his. He could feel her blood flowing, could feel her pulse race as if it beat within himself, growing louder in his ears until it deafened him. But she sat in his embrace silently, gazing at him, breathing hard.

                “I can’t-” he murmured painfully with a shake of his head, his eyes squeezing shut as she shifted around him.

                She shook her head as well, her arms tightening around his shoulders and trailing, testing their strength. “You can,” she whispered and the shake of her head became a nod. “Just stop _thinking_.” And the words came from her pleadingly, her breath warm on his lips. “Stop thinking about consequences and just _be_ here. _Be_ here with me-”

                He bowed his head from hers, searching for clarity, _begging_ for it as she shifted a hand to clasp his face, to brush his dark curls from his temple. How long had it been since someone else had touched him the way she did then? His previous lovers, they hadn’t held him like this, hadn’t caressed him. Hadn’t allowed their heartbeat to match his in fear, in exhilaration. In fact, the last person to touch him like this has been…her.

                This was far too new and it had been coming ever since he had first laid eyes on her in the forests of Takodana, when she had held a map in her head and he had disregarded the BB unit he had been tasked to retrieve. Since then he had come to sense her across the vast emptiness of space, had felt her in the farthest reaches of his mind until he had no longer been able to hold himself away. He had been curious and then he had been rabid. Now, here in her slender embrace, he was at the end of his rope and the rope was unraveling, tearing.

                “Just be here with me,” she whispered again, her fingers digging into his hair and tangling, playing with his locks desperately. “Just _be_ here-”

                He cut her off as his tether finally broke in the darkness with a defining snap, his entire being searching her out. With a groan, he lifted his head back toward hers, meeting her lips just as she pleaded with him again.

                She recovered from her surprise quickly, instinctively welcoming his kiss and moving once more.

                Every part of him flared to life again as she returned his kiss, as her lips parted to search him out, as her body rocked again around his. He had been as desperate earlier, just as determined, the moment he’d had her in his bed. He had been unable to sleep, kept from his dreams tonight for she had been within reach next to him. How could he have ever thought he would have enough of her? That he would’ve been able to purge her from his system with the one encounter, from the small amounts he’d already had of her, the pieces of her she had gifted him with? He had been stopped at each checkpoint; viewing her as the enemy, hating her, feeling remorseful to her, accepting her, warming to her, and finally bowing to her. She’d bested him at every step. How could he think that this one last thing would sever their ties?

                He had been so wrong, he realized painfully, his arms unwinding from her smooth back. Even as he realized it again and again, the words echoing in his head, his hands opened around her ribs, almost engulfing their slenderness and sliding down her waist to her hips. He dug his fingers into the tender flesh he found there, feeling how she straightened and then became liquid in his hold, the curve and sway of her body as she rose along his length, squeezing him at the tip before slipping back down to him.

                She was going to kill him and she didn’t even know it.

                Her tongue slid against his, her breath hot along his lips, her skin burning him. As her hips rocked into his, he seated himself deep within her for a moment, trapping her to him before taking hold of her once more roughly.

                She froze in the midst of their kiss, her frame tensing. And then she held on, lifting his thoughts clear off him as he rose on his knees and bent, taking her back down to the surface of the bed, still deeply embedded inside of her. She landed heavily and a moment later his weight was on hers and he moved, thrusting into her. She broke from his kiss, a cry leaving her mouth as she found herself in a different position, as he held her tightly in his arms. Each thrust tore sound from her, half cries, half sobs, her body reacting without her.

                It was exactly what he wanted, what he needed her to feel. As he pulled back, he hovered for a moment and he felt her pause as well, floating at the edges of the surrender she searched for but still fought. He needed her to feel how helpless he constantly felt around her, how little control he had because she wielded all of it. He needed her to feel what it was to have someone else keep her just at that fine edge and balance it, walk the tightrope between love and hate-

                His real name came from her mouth as she opened her eyes to meet his, as he saw a soft light in the distance.

                Love and hate.

                “Ben. _Ben-_ ”

                He hated his name, hated the person he had been before he had become Kylo Ren. But somehow, hearing his name on her lips called in such need, he almost wished he had remained that person; for it meant that someone like Rey would accept him, could love him for who he was and not the monster that had stolen her in the night and kept her captive these last few weeks. He squeezed his eyes shut, the light coming closer, warming him with its glow.

                “Ben, please,” she whispered and she strained in his arms, her fingers curling, her nails digging into his flesh. “ _Please-_ ”

                He bent to her mouth, muffling her moans, wishing to stop her from crying out that long lost name. And yet he wanted her to call his name _into_ him, to pull at the memory of the child that had been lost so long ago but still resided somewhere deep inside, no matter how hard he struggled to bury him. He wanted her to help him drag his former self out of the darkness that had become his soul. He thrust into her, feeling his own peak on the horizon, knowing it drew closer with every whisper from her lips, with every plea that resounded in the room. But he knew a moment later that he would not be selfish, that he could no longer want for himself even though it was all he had ever known until _her_.

                He hated her, and in the very end he _loved_ her, and he didn’t even know when it had happened. But in the darkness of the night he wondered if they could even exist with everything that came in between.

                The light in the distance, the tremble in her limbs, drew to a peak and she fell with a loud cry, her body arching under his and into his chest as he thrust deeply. He felt her stiffen around him, tightening him almost to suffocation and the mere feeling of her caused him to still with a low groan, his own body held in a deep vise.

                Surrounding him, she trembled, her body moving of its own accord along his length still as her release swept through her. She held him for all she was worth, her breasts tightening into hard peaks as she shivered uncontrollably, as she fell into sweet release.

                He barely had a moment to breathe through her tight hold. As she loosened around him, he thrust once more blindly before he also crested, his body becoming rigid in desperation, in an eternity of bliss. He felt himself release deep within her, his hips bucking against hers instinctively, wanting to unite with her further even as he came.

                Her legs curled around him, her hips lifting against his, her body squeezing him, milking him of everything he was. Exactly as he had thought, as he had feared only minutes before. But as he came inside of her, he found that he was not afraid, that he did not regret what had transpired between them in the dark hours of this night. He was still alive and he was still himself even though he craved and revered every part of her. He thrust again, languidly, releasing himself into her willingly, feeling as if he had been granted forgiveness, absolution.

                She accepted him, moans falling from her lips, her body shifting across his bed, and she was beautiful. He had never seen a creature as stunning as her as he rose away and watched her ride out her orgasm along his length, across his sheets. Merely watching her come back down, he found himself wanting her again and again, found himself staring at her nude body and appreciating every part of her, every curve, and every tanned limb. Half blind with release and he still wanted to lower his mouth to her breast, wanted to pull out of her just to replace himself with his hand, to force her to come over and over again with his touch alone. He wanted her then in such different ways, different positions, different rooms, that he didn’t even recognize his need. He was almost an animal; a spent animal, but one nonetheless.

                And she did that to him. She drove him to senselessness, to blindness. He could have her in all those ways he wanted and she would still leave him wanting; distracted during the day, unstable in battle. He would only every think of her and the mere thought that he was doomed sent the smallest shiver of terror through him.

                But then she shifted, her body rubbing at his very sensitive member, and he looked down at her under his large frame, how she was almost enveloped by him.

                She sighed softly, her skin flushed, her eyes dazed. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out, her breath soft but still heavy. And as he slid slightly across his bed, those light eyes slid shut, her body still quivering from what he had driven her to.

                He had done that to her. He had.

                As if hearing his words, she pushed herself up from the mattress and kissed him, her lips warm and soft.

                He returned the kiss after a moment, felt how wet she was below, how he slid along her thighs and pelvis though he remained anchored within her still.

                Was this what others felt, what others knew? Was this what prompted people to become monotonous, to marry? To bear children with each other?

                Was this what his parents had felt? What they had felt, a smuggler and a freedom fighter, before they had abandoned him, and then each other, to return to their true selves?

                And if it was, what did that mean for him, for _them_ , with the people they were and the sides they represented?

                He closed his eyes to his thoughts, abandoned himself to her kiss, to her softness and her warmth. He felt deep inside that she rejoiced at his gesture, that she had looked for this reaction from him when he had first taken her in the night on his bed, after their shower, and had been shattered inside when he had not given her what she had sought.

                She broke from him, kissed him again, before dragging his weight down to hers. He went carefully, reading that she wanted it but knowing deep inside that he was far heavier than her, that he did not want to crush her under his weight now.

                She accepted him just fine, with a soft purr in fact, her arms floating around him, her fingers trailing the scarred skin of his back lightly.

                Even that sent a shiver through him. With a soft exhalation he nudged her head to the side, burying his own face in her neck. And he parted his lips, kissing her gently just at the base where her pulse beat.

                The gesture brought a soft moan from her, caused her to curl into him even more and he understood then that this feeling, that these things, they were in fact the reason that people joined together for their entire lives. This feeling here in the darkness of his bedroom, this was why a couple dedicated themselves to each other, why they then weathered the hardships of life together. Usually.

                This connection here.

                He breathed into her, unable to resist pressing his mouth to her neck again, feeling her settle serenely underneath him.

                Yes. This connection here.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Thirty-One: **

She knew what he was asking of her in that moment. Would she be able to do this? Would she be able to hold off the Supreme Leader? Would she come out of this in one piece?

_I am with you._

Staring up into his black metal and chrome helm, she seemed disconnected for a moment. Then awareness returned to her eyes and her features hardened into a blank mask. Unblinkingly, she gave him an almost imperceptible nod before turning to face the doors.

 


	32. Chapter Thirty-One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Updating now and hoping that everyone that got hit with snow is staying warm and is healthy! Thank you guys SO MUCH for the comments and kudos, thank you for being amazing, AMAZING people! And thank you especially because this part of the writing/posting process for me is just as important as the actual writing. I love reading your comments because you guys make me laugh, make me CRY (as I mentioned in a tumblr post yesterday at DayZeeChayn) and just make me thrilled that my fic is going over well. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
> 
> Also, I wanted to make a comment about how I picture Ben smelling (because Dahlia mentioned how she makes homemade candles and that Kylo Ren's scent smells like sandalwood and fir trees, WHICH SOUNDS AMAZING!!!!) because I always mention cedar and metal when describing how he smells. If anyone still has the now discontinued Men's Bath and Body Works scent Twilight Woods, THAT'S what I picture him smelling like! When I write smut, that's usually my go-to scent and I look like a freak sniffing it while trying to write. I even put it all over my hands and type just to keep it front and center. Just a heads up, mostly unimportant, but I wanted you guys in my head as I write, lol!
> 
> Okay enjoy this next chapter!

Chapter Thirty-One:

 

                Rey came awake slowly, aware of Ben shifting in the bed beside her. Blinking sleepily, she turned her head along the pillow, her eyes coming to rest on his lean back as he rose to the edge of the bed and paused to look out through his windows at the brilliant sun, his hands pressed down to the soft surface on either side of him.

                She reached out with a gentle hand and lightly brushed tentative fingertips along his ribs.

                He flinched away as if she had burned him, his body twisting from her touch, his head turning toward her over his shoulder but not meeting her startled gaze.

                She pulled her hand back, bringing it in against her chest and under the blanket protectively.

                Turning his head to face away again, he merely inhaled deeply for a long moment before rising from the bed stiffly. He was still very much nude and she watched him from the safety of the bed as he left the room and moved toward the refresher.

                There came the sounds of a morning routine, the running water, the dragging of clothes.

                Rey slowly came out from under the blanket, shifting her own naked figure toward the edge of the bed where he had sat only minutes before, to wait for him in the sun’s rays. The day would be beautiful, dazzling, if she had any say. She would need to use the refresher after him if he was still in the mood to allow her, if he hadn’t woken up cross with her somehow. She dragged the blankets around herself as she waited in the early morning light, the brilliant star rising to the side of his quarters to bathe his bedroom and her in a hazy yellow pink.

                He came from the refresher already dressed completely in uniform save for his helmet. As he came to the bedroom doorway she lifted her head to look toward him, her hand immediately tightening on the blanket she had pulled around her nude frame and trapping to her breast.

                He froze in the doorway, staring at her as she returned his gaze.

                “I won’t be long,” she said to him quietly and she motioned down to herself. “I just…need to use your refresher for a second.”

                He moved from the doorway and came toward her, almost storming.

                The words died on her lips as she felt a sharp stab of uncertainty ripple through her.

                Then he was in front of her and his gloved hands took hold of her face. She closed her eyes reflexively as he bent toward her and his mouth came down on hers, sudden and wonderful. She breathed him in, her shoulders lifting around her as she returned the unexpected kiss, as she surrendered to him in that moment.

                His lips dragged against hers, stealing a kiss and then another one, almost unwilling to release hers. His fingers were light on her face then, his breath faint along her skin.

                She was falling, she realized in that moment. She was going to fall for him if she hadn’t already, and she already _had_. She knew it then, felt it deep in her bones, deep in the pit of her stomach. She had fallen and she hadn’t even had the chance to put up a fight on the way down. Her entire body had been handed over to him and it had been the last step, the last move on the holo-chess board before her defeat.

                She’d always been rubbish at Dejarik anyway, especially never having a partner.

                His mouth left hers, drawing away though his breath hovered over her lips as if he didn’t wish to part.

                Unable to help herself, she tilted her head and met his forehead with her own, her fingers tightening on the blanket yearningly. She wanted him again; wanted him in his bed, wanted him between her thighs and inside of her, wanted him deep inside her heart.

                _Tell me I didn’t just hand myself over to the slaughter._

                He swallowed as if he had heard her thoughts, his fingers trailing her cheeks. “Take your time,” he said to her softly and he turned his head as well, his skin warm against hers as he merely breathed deeply, almost desperately. As if he couldn’t help himself around her. “You…have an appointment.”

                Then he was pulling out of her grip completely, hands leaving her face, his body recoiling as he turned and left the bedroom swiftly. Not even the room; the entire suite, for she barely heard the door swish closed behind his retreating figure before she was left alone in complete silence save for her heavy breath.

                It was only then that she frowned faintly.

                An appointment?

 

                She had finished showering and dressing, was tying the gray sash around the waist of her black uniform when the doors to the suite opened again. Her eyes lifted to the dark silhouette in the doorway and her eyebrows drew in slightly as he entered the suite, as he came toward her. The closing doors threw the room back into obscurity, for the opacity of the windows in the bedroom kept the room lowly lit, and she merely waited as his dark form crossed the main suite toward her.

                “What is it?” she asked him hesitantly as he came to a stop before her, tall and bathed in blackness, the metal and chrome helmet turned down to her from such a height.

                “The Supreme Leader has asked for you again,” he replied mechanically, his voice flat.

                Rey’s brow lowered once more, her stare becoming hard. “No. Ben, _no-_ ” she stated and she recoiled, her lips clamping together tightly as he snapped his head away from her, as his broad and intimidating figure whirled to pace the floor in aggravation. “Ben!”

                He didn’t reply, merely striding the length of his living suite in irritation, stress rising from his rigid shoulders, from his hands clasped into fists.

                Kylo Ren again, then. All he needed was to whip out that feral lightsaber and slice his living quarters to pieces.

                She released a breath in a huff, realizing that it was an action born from panic. “Ben. I can’t go back to him. I can’t go back to him. He’s too _strong-_ ” And she grimaced when he didn’t respond, when he merely continued to storm back and forth. “Ben!”

                “I know,” he replied in that strange monotonous tone that came out when he wore his helmet. “I know.”

                She grimaced, waving her hand at him frantically. “Take that blasted thing off and _talk_ to me!” she shouted at him, bordering on hysteria.

                He came to a hard stop and spun around to look at her, shoulders stiff, chrome almost invisible in the darkness of his living room quarters.

                As she breathed heavily, staring at him, he lifted his hands to his helmet and pressed the release, removing the helm from his face as the mechanism hissed and shifted.

                Rey exhaled almost deliriously to see his face again as it reappeared and she felt herself loosen slowly as he lowered the helmet to his side to toss it onto the couch.

                And then he was eating up the distance between them with long strides, his hands reaching to her face.

                She lifted her head to his as his mouth came down on hers, as his tongue immediately swept hers, as his groan slipped free. Her heart skipped a beat, her own hands streaking up to grasp his face as well, to dig fingers into his black waves and latch on painfully.

                He broke the kiss momentarily and then dove in again hungrily, his broad frame drawing near and pressing to hers almost desperately. “I need you. I need you again,” he whispered in between stalled breaths, between forceful kisses. “How? _How-_ ”

                Rey grimaced, returning the kiss, reaching for more as she understood his plea. She had half a mind to strip herself of her trousers, to give him the contact they needed even if it meant that he could only bend her over the couch and shove himself into her quickly and urgently, a hasty coupling.

                When had she become this, she wondered dimly, her hands shifting down the surface of his clothes, slipping low. And when had it become a problem? When had she stopped caring and started wishing for him to take her, over and over, every day and whenever he wanted?

                Another groan left his mouth, especially as her hand slid low over his hardness. Even with all of his layers, he was stiff below and she ran her palm over him, fingers digging to cup him.

                He broke from her kiss, his breath leaving him heavily. “No. No. Wait-”

                She was left still arching to kiss him, reaching for him. She knew they were avoiding the issue, that they were pushing it aside for just one more moment, just a little longer. Lowering herself away, she bowed her head into his hands and he pressed his lips into her hair, a sigh leaving his form wearily.

                “I have to take you to him,” he murmured into her temple, staring over the surface of her hair blindly as he spoke. “If I don’t take you, this will all have been for nothing. I won’t be able to protect either of us.”

                Rey frowned, blinking at the rough texture of his tunic in confusion. “Either of us?” she questioned quizzically.

                He lifted her head, dragging his own back to meet her stare. “You won’t be alone in there,” he said to her firmly. “I’ll be with you. Just like last time.”

                Her eyes widened at his words. “You’ve seen what happens when I go to him. The first time it was me and the second time, because you were protecting me, it happened to you. He’s going to hurt you the way he did last time and I-”

                He frowned at her, his face hardening. “Don’t worry about me. It’s happened before and it’ll only happen again. Just gather yourself and be ready. We’ll take it from there together.”

                She searched the stiffness in his expression, her stare flitting between his eyes and his mouth only to return when she felt adrenaline begin to rise once more inside of her. “I don’t want to see you the way I did the last time. I was afraid and I didn’t know what to do-” she said with a shake of her head urgently.

                “And then you took care of me and brought me back,” he cut her off firmly. “This will be more of the same. And it’s fine. I’ve gone through that many times already, before you were even discovered. This has been-” And he shook his head, seeming to shrug it off as insignificant.

                She stared at him with eyes that slowly dawned with horror.

                Lowering his gaze away, he merely shook his head again and trailed his fingers down her cheeks, returning them to grasp her face as they slipped off her jaw. “I will be with you.” And he lifted his fingertip to her temple, tapping it lightly. “I will be here with you, I promise-”

                “But who is going to be with you?” she asked him in a harsh whisper.

                Her question seemed to amuse him the tiniest bit. “You,” he answered and he nodded slightly as if answering a question she hadn’t heard spoken aloud.

                She still didn’t wish to go through with it but then his hands were falling away from her face and she was forced to lower her head from him as well. With another heavy exhalation, he turned and bent to lift his helmet off the couch, turning his dark eyes down to it almost critically as if finally seeing it for the first time.

                Rey watched him intently, her head tilting.

                “And if we come out of this well,” he continued, seeming to pick up a conversation she hadn’t even known they’d had, “I will come to collect on your earlier idea.”

                She blinked at him. “What earlier idea?” she asked with a small frown.

                His lips quirking slightly and his hands still cradling the helmet, he lifted his head to look at her and then leaned toward her. His mouth hovered over her ear and he murmured, “That pretty little idea you had earlier when I kissed you. It involved bending you over the couch.”

                Rey immediately stiffened in embarrassment and she snapped her head toward him, catching sight of his lips out of the corner of her eyes. “I’ve told you to stay out of my head,” she stated to him quietly, eyes darting up to meet his.

                This time the smile was there, the curve of his lips. “You were in mine, actually,” he said, his voice low and husky. “Took the idea straight from my thoughts.”

                Rey recoiled to look at him directly but the smile was already gone although the humor had not left his eyes. Bowing his head, he lifted the helmet to slip it on.

                Her hand streaked out, stopping him halfway through the motion. As he turned to look at her curiously, she drew close and rose onto tiptoe, reaching to kiss him.

                He returned the kiss immediately, a sigh leaving him at the brush of her lips.

                Breaking from him, she pressed her cheek to his, inhaling his scent deeply. “I will be waiting for you to collect,” she whispered and her brow drew in painfully for a moment before she could finally release him. Then she lowered herself back down to gaze up at him, hazel eyes clear.

                His eyes were brighter than she had ever seen them before.

                They clouded over a second later as he turned his attention back to the helmet in his hands.

                Reaching out, Rey took it from his grasp slowly and tentatively, holding its weight as he released it to her in bemusement. Breathing in deeply, she also looked at the helm for a long moment. Such blackness and gloom. Destruction. Her face was reflected in its surface and she saw nothing but heaviness in it. With a slight shake of her head, she turned to him and lifted it toward him.

                He dipped his head for her and then she was sliding it over his black waves, his face disappearing behind its sleek, slightly dinged edges and curves.

                Settling it carefully, she released the helmet and watched as it automatically shifted the pieces into place with a hiss, closing and locking down over his face.

                And then he was gone and was Kylo Ren again.

                Her heart broke all over again at seeing him in his black gear; she already missed his face and the emotion in his eyes.

                His hand lifted to her face slowly as if realizing that she didn’t recognize him again. “It’s only for now,” he said quietly even as the words came out low, mechanically.

                She nodded, her lips tightening and twisting, and her eyes slid closed as he pressed his palm to her cheek gently. “I know,” she whispered.

                Trailing his fingers along her skin, he hesitated before dropping his hand away.

                Then that hand caught hers on the way and pulled lightly.

 

                When they exited Kylo Ren’s living quarters, she fell into line as had become their custom; him slightly ahead, her a step behind and to his right. They strode down the long corridors silently, his tall form already exuding the anger that she had come to recognize as a part of him. Even walking now, she was acutely aware of his hands fisted tightly at his sides as he stormed ahead; his heated gait, his sharp movements when he noticed something along the way only to dismiss it and continue on.

                There was no conversation but Rey was quite aware of the turmoil of his emotions; ire, arrogance, defensiveness, and the smallest amount of apprehension. He led her toward the lift and searched the corridors as they paused before it, as she bowed her head to wait for it to reach their floor. Even his gestures were sharp, his helm darting to a pair of stormtroopers as they appeared around a corner, making their rounds. She had stepped closer to him, her head turned away, but he had calmed with her closeness, the breath from his helmet easing.

                Even in the lift, as he led her in, they remained silent in the dim light. It was unwelcoming, she realized then as she wound around to Kylo Ren’s side and stepped back to stand just behind him. The entire base made the experience inhospitable, uncomfortable. How did an entire group, an entire staff of people, operate here?

                He turned his head toward her, the edges of his helmet jutting out sharply over the curve of his broad shoulder.

                How can there be a person under there, she wondered almost wildly.

                _Everything is fine. I’m still here._

                Her eyelashes fluttered slightly at hearing his voice in her head, at recognizing its depth and tone. At suddenly remembering his hands on her, at his heavy, comforting weight on her body as he’d made love to her.

                The sigh came faintly in her head, his breath deep inside.

                _You can’t do that when we’re outside of the room. You throw my concentration off and I need…I need to concentrate-_

                She merely blinked, looking ahead at the closed door of the lift as it carried them along several floors, her hands clasped tightly behind her stiff back. “Understood,” she murmured, her lips barely moving. There was a security camera in the upper corner of the lift and the last thing she needed in that moment was for her thoughts to foil what was to come. “I apologize.”

                He turned his head to face forward once more, straightening. Silence fell for a long spell as the lift traveled, as they waited for their floor to come.

                But softly through his helmet, he whispered, “Don’t apologize. I will remind you tonight of those things you think of.”

                Her lips parted at his words, at the images that those words brought to mind, and when the lift finally reached the floor he had selected, she was almost sure that she wouldn’t be able to leave the elevator. It was only when he had taken a step and then slowed to tilt his helmeted head back her way that she suddenly scrambled to follow him on weak legs.

                But even as she stepped out onto the floor, she felt her sudden adrenaline drain away at seeing the familiar corridor. Her heart froze, her body going cold and she immediately wanted to turn and race back into the lift.

                Kylo Ren came to a stop, his head facing forward, his hands slowly curling into fists at his sides. “Rey. Come,” he ordered in a low, firm tone.

                _I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t-_

                “You can,” came his mechanical voice quietly, his head bowing slightly. “You can. Because I’m going to be with you.”

                Her brow drew in tight, her breaths threatening to rip her chest apart as they slipped from her mouth in elevating panic.

                _Rey._

                This time his voice seemed to be his usual tone and she realized it was because it was in her head. She blinked hazily and looked at the back of his helmeted head, struggling to reassert herself as his voice came again, sweeping in from the corners of her mind and coalescing into one clear, deep tone.

                _I am with you. I am always with you._

                Her heart almost breaking, she found herself nodding senselessly at his words in her head, at his voice hovering comfortingly deep inside.

                “Okay,” she whispered aloud.

                And a moment later, even as she felt the fear grow inside of her, her legs were moving and dragging her forth. She came up behind Kylo Ren and paused when he didn’t immediately continue to walk, hesitated as he twisted his head even further to look back at her.

                She didn’t know what he saw on her face or in her eyes then but the contact was one-sided and off-kilter. He stood rigidly, his head turned toward her, the light shifting across the smooth surfaces, gleaming along the chrome curves. Her eyes flickered toward his helm wordlessly, her face falling into stillness, and she knew then that he didn’t know how to react, didn’t know what was going through her head. Instead of responding, she merely stared for a moment longer at the metallic lines of his helmet before turning her head forward robotically and training her gaze ahead to the long corridor that lay ahead.

                He held for a long, almost uncomfortable moment. Then with an inward nod, he faced forward, his tall form straightening. And when he began to storm down the hallway, she was on his right and slightly behind, marching with him.

                They crossed the expanse to the door that led to the Supreme Leader’s conference room and came to a stop before the sealed doors, the silence between them almost excessive.

                Kylo Ren turned, his tall frame facing the doors for a long moment before shifting to meet her straight.

                Rey lifted her head, eyes darting up toward his masked face, the slight swallow in her throat giving away her uneasiness. But even then, she forced a blank expression, squaring her shoulders and slowing her breaths back to calmness.

                Kylo Ren merely stared at her, his face hidden behind his mask.

                She knew what he was asking of her in that moment. Would she be able to do this? Would she be able to hold off the Supreme Leader? Would she come out of this in one piece?

                _I am with you._

                Staring up into his black metal and chrome helm, she seemed disconnected for a breath. Then awareness returned to her eyes and her features hardened into a blank mask. Unblinkingly, she gave him an almost imperceptible nod before turning to face the doors.

                They slid open as if she had commanded them, revealing the same dark, eerie room from her nightmares.

                Without another glance or word, she bowed her head, eyes focused forward, and strode into the room as if she had no reason to be afraid.

                And he was left staring off after her as the doors slid closed before her.

 

                Once the doors closed, she was left in a cool darkness, that strange blue light filtering into the room and outlining the massive arches, the dimness in the corners, in the shadows. She lifted her head, her eyes sweeping the high ceiling and memorizing it yet again, feeling the cold and hating every moment of it as it began to seep into her skin and breath.

                The throne ahead remained empty only for a moment. As she slowed in her descent, that strange hologram came into being. The large figure of a hunched man appeared on his stone throne, his form bent low, his wizened and scarred face turning in her direction.

                “Come closer,” he commanded her in a slow drawl, uncoiling long fingers and motioning her near.

                Her expression immediately soured, her brow drawing low. “You have no power over me,” she stated quietly but firmly, her tone hard.

                He regarded her coolly, his disfigured face tilting. “You are naïve to believe that,” he stated in a low, tempered tone. “You are naïve to think that I cannot control every step you take and everything you do. That I cannot control everything you feel and everything you see.”

                And with those words, he was suddenly in her head, his presence overwhelming from one moment to the next. The cold room vanished into darkness as she closed her eyes, as she faltered. She was knocked off balance as if someone had struck her across the face, her body lurching. Gasping, she staggered sideways only to regain her footing, to find her balance and recover with a hard shake of her head. He would not best her here, not if she had anything to say about it.

                But he was still in her head.

                Images of darkness and blood came at her, one assault after another and she felt her jaw drop open, her hands flying to her temples in alarm. He had done this to her before, had shown her the same visions. The last time this had happened, he had shown her things that she hadn’t been able to stomach; she had _felt_ them. Now he did the same and she let out a pained cry, her eyes squeezing shut even though it didn’t hide the images from her, didn’t mask how real they felt; the sensations in the visions raced through her, crippling her as she hallucinated pain and horror, darkness and an unbearable coldness that immediately attacked her limbs and fingers.

                “I can control your very thoughts,” the creature on the throne rasped at her.

                And suddenly, he did. Rey curled over, her hands to her head, as she was overwhelmed with images of agony and blood; corpses running red, disfigured faces and bodies that she didn’t recognize. But one that she did.

                One that she _did_.

                Even as she recognized him amongst the scarred and broken cadavers, she was overcome again as he made her feel what it was to be assaulted, to have a bone broken. A wavering sound left her mouth as she hunched low, as she saw her body in her mind and watched as she fell into combat with a shadowed figure, just in time to see her opponent’s blue lightsaber slice across her leg.

                As if it had happened physically, she was taken to the floor effortlessly, agony flaring through her thigh and searing up her entire body. A scream tore from her and she bent over her legs, favoring her left one as it bled into snow.

                Into snow?

                _This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening-_

                “Isn’t it?” the monster on the throne questioned. “Don’t you remember that cold, snowy night?”

                Rey winced, her heart pounding in her chest and her ears, her vision running red with blood in the snow. This hadn’t happened to her, she tried to tell herself, to convince herself. This hadn’t happened to her-

                “You crippled my apprentice that night,” the Supreme Leader said slowly, his voice a low growl. “And now he had emerged stronger, complete. Because of you.”

                _No. No._

                Another vision hit her and she suddenly saw herself in the image; the snow-capped woods around her, the cold air that froze her as she inhaled from her knees, as she watched a copy of herself advance with Luke’s lightsaber in her hand.

                _No, no, no. This is StarKiller. This is StarKiller-_

                She had already taken Kylo Ren down by then, when she had come the way she watched her counterpart near now. She recognized the look on her twin’s face, understood what had gone through her head in that moment.

                _I was ready to kill him. I was ready to kill him and he couldn’t have stopped me._

                “Please,” she whispered and she winced as she felt her knee throb, her hand clamped on the wound to stop the blood flow.

                _This isn’t real! This isn’t real. Please. Please. This isn’t real-_

                “I can show you anything I want,” the Rey from her visions said in a low, clipped tone, and she’d never realized that she could be so cold, so menacing. Is that what Ben had seen so many times on her face, in her eyes, when he had done nothing but try to save her? “You took the knight to a knee. Now let me show you how it feels to have a lightsaber carve into your face and shoulder.”

                And even as the Rey in her visions spoke, she was already swiping upward with the blue blade, the flash momentarily blinding her. Sight returned fast enough, though, to see her dream counterpart finish the strike and swing the blade to a resting position at her side and hold.

                Then the pain flared down the soft flesh of her cheek and neck, biting deep into her shoulder.

                She toppled instantly, her body falling backward roughly to the cold ground, her breath knocked clear out of her. For a long moment she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel. Then the agony came, ripping through her like fire, her breath returning. She cried out unwillingly, her scream cutting the air as she felt her entire body react. Searing heat flashed across her face and shoulder, once a familiar phantom pain while resting beside Finn in a tank of bacta, now made real, intensified.

                _This is what I did to him, to Ben. Just a shadow of what he made me feel when he was healing-_

                A sob curled her figure, causing her to become rigid, and she found herself rolling onto her knees, her vision clearing just enough to see the doors in the real world ahead.

                Escape.

                But she had been crippled earlier and now she had also lost the use of an arm because of the attack. She could barely breathe much less move and the door was so far away-

                “Come to me and I can take all of that pain away,” the creature on the throne murmured almost carelessly from behind her. “All of the pain you feel, the broken bones, the severed muscles and limbs. The pain you brought down on my apprentice. I can take it all away.”

                Wincing, Rey lowered her head to the floor, fighting the urge to scream but no longer fighting the need to weep.

                She had done this to him. She had done this to him, and her heart broke at the thought, as she imagined him as she saw him now as opposed to the monster she had first met. She had fought for her life, yes. But when she had channeled him in their Force Bond to use his own skills against him, she had practically torn him apart, especially as he had already been wounded and bleeding in the snow.

                All of his scars, and she had only added to them.

                Her tears fell free as the image of herself vanished in her head, as the scene was replaced with a dark, foreboding sky of black clouds and red sky, radioactive and apocalyptic. She rubbed her forehead across the hard floor, grimacing, and her tears were hot on her face as she wept, mixing with blood and dripping to the floor, stinging her open wounds. She knew this place, knew this was where the Supreme Leader would push his weight on her after incapacitating her and would then slowly and thoroughly dismantle her.

                “Come to me and I can-”

                She pushed the creature’s voice away, heaving a heavy breath and lifting herself to a knee, her other continuing to fail her. As she straightened with difficulty, she dragged her lifeless arm with her, her cheek and jaw flaming, and she raised her eyes to the red sky, searching.

                Even if he wasn’t here at the moment, she could at the very least envision his sunlight through the dark clouds, remember how he had come for her before.

                Lifting her head to the sky above, she closed her eyes and breathed, her body swaying with the effort. Her thigh was unresponsive under her, her body supported by one knee alone, and her arm hung limply at her side but she still breathed, pulling air and hope into her chest. Even if this felt real, it was not, and she dragged the realization close, nurturing it and keeping it tight to her breast. None of this was real and he had _told_ her that it wouldn’t be real, that nothing in this room would ever be real.

                Just as nothing had ever been real in his childhood until he had ripped Luke’s budding Jedi school apart; all of it due to a whisper in his head that had been there for so long that he had begun to believe that it had been his very own inner voice, that he had been slowly and surely going insane.

                A sob broke from her, her heart breaking as well, her entire body reeling from a pain both illusory and genuine.

                _It was real. The entire time, he was real in his head._

                And even as she felt her face fall into despair, she also felt a sudden warmth. Just a shaft on her face as if she had stepped under a tree and discovered the slight slant of sunlight through the branches. Grimacing, she opened her eyes and turned them upward.

                The sun was overhead, beaming powerfully between heavy clouds.

                Her heart leapt in her chest, her eyelashes fluttering with crystal tears as she gazed at the shafts of sun, as she felt them on her face and realized she could finally breathe.

                _It’s you. It’s you-_

                Her eyes swept the sky, watched as the sun cleared the clouds away slowly, as a blue sky emerged from the red heavens.

                _It’s you._

                Exhaling in relief, the pain of her thigh and jaw lifting away though not entirely disappearing, she hunched over her knees wearily and then slipped sideways onto her hip and into the hard floor as it became green grass beneath her. She didn’t really understand why she was always in plains of grass and trees but the sun beaming overhead was enough to placate her, to comfort her.

                _You’re here._

                And as she slowly and gingerly rolled onto her back to look up at the blossoming blue sky, she felt her fears die away, felt the Supreme Leader’s words fall into silence and then stillness as she focused completely on the sun overhead; she was suddenly aware of the light breeze lifting around her, the scent of wildflowers and blossoms, of blades of grass and morning dew.

                Of metal and cedar woods. Of _him_.

                _You’re here,_ she thought once more, and she closed her eyes in the sun and felt the tears roll down the sides of her face as she reached out and held onto him tightly.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Thirty-Two: **

Her heart broke at his words, her head tilting as she felt the same fear rise up in her; fear that she wouldn’t be able to care for him, fear that she had brought this down on him for his protection of her. Fear that he might not recover from one of the Supreme Leader’s attacks, just as she was not meant to. She saw that now; she was not meant to survive the confrontations between herself and Snoke, and she was almost certain that it had never been the Supreme Leader’s intention to lure her to the Dark Side at all.

She was never meant to survive here.


	33. Chapter Thirty-Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, sorry I am updating so late. I got back from seeing my brother and my parents so I've only now had the chance to review the next chapter and make any changes. I hope there aren't any grammatical errors that I have made after making changes to the text after my poor beta (WHO IS AMAZING, I WILL STILL FIGHT YOU FOR HER) went through it like a CHAMP!
> 
> Thank you guys for the kudos, the comments, the HILARITY! I swear we are ALL a hot mess and I love every single moment of it!! I have a few comments in my inbox but I can't answer them right now because it is close to midnight and I work tomorrow! BUT. Poaxath, don't be sorry for giving me prompts! Or anyone else reading! I want 2018 to be a year of writing and I want to be able to look back at the end of the year at an awesome collection and be like, "I did this. Look at it. I did ALL of this!" And then cry to everyone about it and thank you guys and hug you and basically drop boogers on all of you as I weep, lol! So please! Contribute, be a part of the fandom, say hey, and know that I appreciate each and every one of you reading!
> 
> Enjoy this smutty chapter!!

Chapter Thirty-Two:

 

                She waited for him almost an entire half day.

                Stormtroopers had cautiously escorted her back to Kylo Ren’s quarters, Hux no longer amused at the fact that she was now seemingly resistant to the Supreme Leader’s suggestion. She had been shoved back into the knight’s quarters and had looked around in the darkness as evening had settled outside the windows of his bedroom, her body feeling somehow rigid and restless. She had wandered between the living suite and the bedroom, pausing within and seeing the bed only to remember everything that had transpired on it between the two of them, to then leave the room in worry.

                Where was he? Where _was_ he?

                Even in the darkness as she closed her eyes, all she saw was his strong body over her, felt his beautiful heaviness and his warmth, his hands on her face and his mouth drawing a kiss from her lips. She grimaced and lifted her hands to her head, pulling at her hair. _Where was he?_ He had taken the assault from his Supreme Leader once more and now the day was turning to night and he was still out somewhere in the compound.

                And he hurt, of that she was quite aware. She could feel tendrils of his thoughts, of his pain, and he was shaky and exhausted. He was somewhere in the base running feebly, his response to her calls dim, weary.

                _Come to me._

 

                It was hours later that he returned to their shared suite.

                She heard hard footsteps outside of the suite and immediately snapped to her feet, coming to stand beside the couch as the doors slid open.

                He entered tall, stiffly on heavy legs. And the second the door slid shut behind him he exhaled loudly and reached a hand out to the wall to catch himself as he staggered.

                “Where have you been?” she demanded frantically and she ran over to him, her arm coming up under his, her shoulder and chest supporting him as he bent forward weakly. “ _Where have you been?_ ”

                He heaved once more wearily, resting some of his weight on her. “I…I had to meet with the General and the Captain. I had to-” he murmured in that low monotonous tone and he let out a breath, his masked head dipping low as he curled in. “I can’t breathe.”

                Eyes widening, Rey lifted her free hand to his mask, fishing around for the latch under his helmet. Flicking it, she tilted her palm away as the pieces of helmet released and loosened. As the parts slid open with a hiss, she grasped the helm to lift it off his head, lowering it to the floor and quickly returning to cup his face tightly.

                His skin was ashen; his dark eyes and lashes closed and squeezed tightly against his pale cheeks.

                “Ben. Ben,” she called loudly, looking for some kind of response. When he merely shook his head at her painfully, she hesitated and then pressed her hand to his forehead and temple. He was burning up under her cool palm and she dragged his head down to look at her as she leaned in close. “Do you want to sleep or do you want to shower, cold water? To wake you up? What do you need?”

                Exhaling wearily, his eyes slid open slightly, thick dark lashes fluttering, and he looked at her heavily. “Just you,” he whispered and he closed his eyes once more, shaking his head again, mumbling vaguely. “Just you.”

                Her heart broke at his words, her head tilting as she felt the same fear rise up in her; fear that she wouldn’t be able to care for him, fear that she had brought this down on him for his protection of her. Fear that he might not recover from one of the Supreme Leader’s attacks, just as she was not meant to. She saw that now; she was not meant to survive the confrontations between herself and Snoke, and she was almost certain that it had never been the Supreme Leader’s intention to lure her to the Dark Side at all.

                She was never meant to survive here.

                “Can you walk? Can you make it to the refresher?” she asked him worriedly.

                He hesitated and then nodded, his eyes weary. “I can make it,” he murmured and as she took a step back, her hand on his spine, he nodded once more as if to convince himself and then began to stumble toward the refresher.

                Rey quickly stepped back under his arm and walked with him to the room, lifting her head as the lights automatically came on overhead upon their entrance. He instinctively shut his eyes at the sudden brightness, wincing at the harshness and staggering slightly. “Do you…can you undress or do you need me to help you?” she asked him as she sat him down on the closed toilet seat.

                He blindly reached for her a moment later as she pulled away slightly, his eyes still clenched shut, his head bowing low. “Don’t go. Stay. Stay here with me,” he asked of her and he hunched over as if the plea had taken all his strength from him.

                Nearing again and crouching between his knees, she lifted her hands to his face, pushing his dark waves away from his temples and pressing her palms to his jaw and cheeks. “I’m here,” she said to him quietly as she knelt, and she curled his hair behind his ears as he exhaled heavily, bending into her hands tiredly. She pressed her cheek to his head, feeling the burning heat of his skin under her cheekbone, her fingers trailing through his hair soothingly. “I’m here, Ben. Just sit back. I’m going to take your clothes off and put you in the shower,” she whispered and her brows drew up sorrowfully as she grimaced, as she felt pain deep within at his weariness, his frailty.

                Making a soft sound of effort, he rose away from her and lowered himself to the wall at his side, his pinched face pale and sallow.

                Rey bent to rid him of his boots and then stood, bending toward him. “Ben, sit up. I have to get your clothes off.” As she spoke, she darted toward the stall to start the shower, checking the temperature of the water before returning to him.

                He had risen straight on his rear and now he groaned slightly as he began to paw at his clothes, half tangling himself in the sleeves and layers as he shifted to remove them.

                She didn’t want to laugh at the sight but she couldn’t help herself. Smiling sadly, she reached out and helped him, slowing his gestures and carefully lifting the tunic off his body and over his head, following with the layers underneath. Setting the clothes aside, she knelt between his knees again and lifted her hands to his belt line, her eyes coming to meet his.

                Even half numb, he shook his head and sighed resignedly. “You’re absolutely beautiful,” he whispered, sounding perplexed, as if he didn’t understand.

               She huffed out a short laugh. “You probably say that to all the scavenger girls,” she quipped as she turned her attention back to his trousers.

                But he shook his head and he straightened off the wall once more, his hands lifting to cup her face. “No. No,” he groaned and he leaned forward, pressing his lips to hers with a hitched breath.

                Rey closed her eyes to accept his kiss, exhaling with him as she caught his scent from his skin, as she felt his heat and felt him slowly begin to come back. He flared in her head, his thoughts becoming his once more and no longer a strange string of words and emotions, of constant sickness and exhaustion. Falling into his kiss, she clasped him around his waist, her fingers dancing carelessly along his skin and bringing him to shift and uncoil as if she had tickled him.

                Breaking from the kiss, he bowed his head against hers and simply respired for a long moment, breathing her in as well. His touch was light along her skin as he traced her cheeks and jaw with them, as he merely rested against her.

                Turning her brow along his forehead, she spoke against his mouth, feeling how close he hovered, how their breath mingled. “Take your trousers off.”

                He hesitated, his hands falling from her face to her neck, fingers trailing into her hair.

                She also paused, suspended in that moment between the dream and the temptation as he breathed heavily against her, as he suddenly showed her how much he wanted her in a flash of a thought, an image.

                Then he took hold of her, hands tangling in her hair and pulling, his body rising from the seat.

                Rey was forced to follow, feeling as if she had wandered into the middle of a hurricane sweeping toward her. She was hauled to her feet and then sent stumbling, his large frame pushing her backward unsteadily until she collided with the wall. Even with the impact, his hand was there to protect her head, his arms cushioning her shoulders as he pressed into her, as he dipped low to claim her mouth fiercely.

                She gave herself to him with a low moan, her hands immediately shifting to touch him, to run her hands over his sides, to drag nails down his ribs and torso. “H-How…I assume you’re feeling better,” she gasped as he broke the kiss, as he pushed his hips into hers roughly.

                He didn’t respond, his hands dropping away to begin pulling at her clothes, untying the sash and pitching it aside, lifting the tunic and drawing away from her just long enough to lift it over her head and off.

                They clawed at each other almost like animals in the silence that followed, clothes being pulled and yanked, tossed aside and stripped away, heat rising from their skin as it was bared, as hard muscle met soft curves.

                Ridding Rey of her own trousers, he made a soft sound as she took hold of his pants and yanked them down his frame frenziedly. She rose as he disentangled himself from them and returned to her, his hands lifting to take hold of her face and kissing her as if they had no more time left.

                She returned the kiss, hands clasping his elbows and arms before she dipped beneath his hands and slipped even tighter into him, now ushering him roughly toward the refresher stall.

                He allowed her to lead him even though he refused to release her from the kiss, staggering backward and then flinching slightly as the cool spray bore down on his shoulders and slipped down his massive frame. Then she was stepping under the jets with him and she squeaked at the cold water, causing him to smile slightly into her mouth as she moved to hop out from under the spray. But then he was pulling her back under the water briskly and back into his kiss.

                _It’s her. It’s her. She can do it. She can do it-_

                Rey frowned under his lips, under the haze he spoke through as she picked it up from him.

                “I what?” she asked, pulling away from him even as he pulled at her. She blinked up at him under the shower spray, grimacing as she felt the water fall into her eyes, as he lifted his head and then shook his wet hair aside.

                “What?” he asked.

                She searched his eyes as he bowed his head to her once more, as he also blinked under the spray of cool water. “You said I can do it, that it’s me. That I can do it. What does that mean?” she asked him, her light eyes searching his dark gaze.

                He drew back, his frame stiffening slightly. “Rey-”

                “What does that mean?” she asked him once more, her gaze turning hard.

                The knight blinked at her, hesitant. “Nothing. It means nothing-”

                She pulled away from his arms, stepping backward and bringing herself out of the fall of the cool water. “Ben,” she stated, her face straining. “What does that mean?”

                He straightened as she pulled herself free, as he stared at her from under the spray of water. It was completely ludicrous that they would have this conversation in his refresher, that they could both be standing naked before each other and still somehow be in an argument. “It means that you…that you can change everything,” he responded and he stared at her for another moment before turning his body into the spray, lifting his heavily muscled arms and dragging his hands through his hair as he began to bathe.

                Rey hesitated, her eyes following him for a moment before looking away in confusion. “Change…what?” she asked him softly, confusion dimming her expression.

                He didn’t respond, reaching out for the soap and running it over his body. Now that she had centered him once more, he felt as if he stood on shaky ground, as if anything he said would somehow drive her away or turn her against him. He shook his head inwardly, running the soap over his body and turning to a small vial that held a cleanser for his hair, pouring some of it into his palm to then apply in silence.

                “Ben?” she asked and she had entered the stall with him but she was still half dry and looking as if she had been caught in an unexpected rain shower. “What am I changing? And for whom?” she asked him carefully.

                Turning to look toward her as he rinsed the wash from his hair, he took her in and felt his expression soften. Why would he think that she would ever feel safe here, that she could allow even one thing to comfort her in this place? Reaching out, he took hold of her wrist and pulled her into his chest, releasing her to then lift both hands to her face and pushing her hair back as the water fell into it and sloshed around her breasts and shoulders. “For me, Rey. You’re changing things for me,” he responded quietly.

                Her light eyes darted between his before dropping uncertainly. “I…I don’t think-”

                He leaned down to press his lips to hers, to cut off her excuses. He didn’t need them and he didn’t believe them. She was already changing things, had done so since the moment he had brought her onto the base. He sighed into her mouth, his fingers tangling in her hair as it became full and heavy with water, as she molded herself against his tall frame.

                And in that moment, he wanted her. He wanted her almost savagely, kicking and screaming, writhing and pulsing in his arms. Swallowing almost desperately, his kiss deepened and he dropped his hands away from her face, lowering them to her waist and hips.

                She made a soft sound in his mouth, her arms lifting to wind around his neck slowly and then tightly, dragging him down to her even to his detriment, his body bending awkwardly. But he would give it to her, he would give her anything, he realized, as he dug his fingers into her hips, as he coiled low for her to cradle him in her embrace.

                “Yes,” she whispered as she broke from his mouth for a moment, her lips brushing his. “Yes.”

                Exhaling, he bent, his hands sliding down to her rear and lifting her up effortlessly, straightening with her in his arms. Her legs wrapped around his waist instinctively, her arms drawing him deeper into her kiss, and she moaned into his mouth as he turned her into the wall of his refresher, as he pressed her into the surface and lowered a hand to her thigh to clutch her close.

                Rey broke from the kiss, already pushing her head back against the slick wall as he shifted and then positioned her. Lifting his hand from her thigh, he pushed her wet hair back, trailing his palm along her cheek and jaw as he bent his face into her neck. And then he was pushing into her below, his hardness slipping in smoothly.

                She moaned aloud, her call ringing in the shower, her arms tightening around his neck.

                She was perfection in his arms, he realized dimly, distractedly. Seated so deep inside of her, he cradled her in his embrace and against his pelvis, accommodating himself so that he could push just that little bit more into her.

                A low whisper came from her, a prayer even. He couldn’t hear it and he didn’t understand it but her thighs widened and then closed in again around his waist, taking in the last bit of him and he was home.

                He was _home_.

                “Ben-”

                Burying his face back into her wet neck, he drew his hips away and then thrust back into her, aiming deeper, wanting more of her.

                Her cry echoed throughout the refresher, running beneath the shower spray, but her thoughts were a hurricane. Even as he slowly drew out of her only to return to her in one hard thrust, he saw that she was half falling and half floating. Her arms were tight and almost painful around his shoulders, her head arched away, and she was depending on him completely as he held her suspended off the floor but she was not one to leave it to him now. No longer. Their affair had awakened her and now she reached for him, using his own body and strength to gain leverage.

                He bowed his head into her shoulder and swore inaudibly as she began to lift herself along his frame, as she slid up and down his hard length.

                _If I’ve ever made a mistake-_

                She turned her head to him as she slid back down his length, as she pressed her mouth to his, her tongue slipping across his and drawing a helpless groan from him. “This isn’t it,” she whispered to him and she showed him, riding him easily and urgently, wishing to take him wholly. “This isn’t it-”

                Cursing again, he pushed her back into the wall and began to thrust eagerly, hungrily. He would make her come here and then he would drag her into his bedroom and do it again, over and over. However long it took before she realized that he needed her and that she was instrumental in his life, in his liberation. His freedom.

                And as he lifted a hand away from her to jam it into the stall wall, he put his entire self behind his thrusts, feeling her begin to clench and then release, her cries ringing throughout the refresher and tangling in his head and thoughts, her voice echoing purely in the room and in his head. And he knew in that moment that there would never be anyone else, that once she was gone, there would be no one to replace her in the base, in his eyes, in his heart.

                And he didn’t know what to feel then. But as she moaned into his ear, he found that he didn’t care. Not then and not just yet.

                Soon. But not now that she was perfection in his arms.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Thirty-Three: **

And in that moment, he loved her. He _loved_ her.

His lips came open at her words, a shiver running through him. _Yes_ , he realized. If she would have him, if she could somehow accept him, then yes. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.


	34. Chapter Thirty-Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so ReyandKyloForever needs to calm down with reading my mind. I don't like it. I DON'T LIKE IT!!! *hisses*
> 
> You guys need to all STOP dropping dead on me. Not cool. NOT COOL! Poaxath keeps hauling bodies all over the place between freezers while Cara just acts like its not happening and I honestly do NOT want to go to jail, people!! Please! For God's sake, conTROL YOURSELVES!!!
> 
> Lastly, there is SMUT in this chapter. And NO, there is no more room in my freezer for dead bodies so try not to die! Also, NO, you can not have any of my raspberry rum because I NEED it to write smut later! And to end this all, you guys can absolutely call me Tas. You can call me DayZee (Daisy) but don't think for ONE SECOND that I stole that name from that...that JEDI!! I born FIRST, dammit!! She needs to ask MY permission to borrow my name, that NAME STEALER!!
> 
> *walks off in a huff* *runs back quickly*
> 
> BTW thank you guys for being awesome!! Love you!! Enjoy the smut- I MEAN, the chapter!! XD
> 
> I know that some things don't match up to what happened in TLJ but forgive me, please. At the time that I was finishing this, I didn't know what would happen in TLJ. The questions of Rey's lineage and the reasons for Ben running to Snoke, those were all conclusions that I used for this fic so please enjoy and I'm sorry that it doesn't match up to TLJ!!

Chapter Thirty-Three:

 

                Rey came awake from a nightmare; black dreams of shadows and blood, of wild lightsabers and a pale landscape brimming with snow, flakes falling lazily all around. She instinctively reached out and her fingers trailed across a broad chest, across the scores of scars, large and small. Finding the beating heart beneath, she felt herself immediately calm, blinking into the darkness of Ben’s bedroom.

                He slept on still beside her though his brow was drawn, an expression close to a wince on his face. His breathing was hard and rapid, his chest rising beneath her palm harshly.

                Maybe they had been sharing the same nightmare or maybe he was caught in one all of his own.

                Lifting her hand, she raised herself onto her elbow and leaned close to the man sleeping beside her. The moon shone down on him, painting him in silver. But his scars-

                She saw them again in that moment, her eyes sweeping along their surfaces. So many of them, all different in size, in color, in healed flesh; the one on his left shoulder where Finn had caught him with Luke’s lightsaber. The one close to her as she leaned over him, the harsh stain where he had been assaulted by Chewbacca’s bowcaster. She tilted her head to look at it, her eyes running over it before darting back to his face as he shifted edgily in his sleep. She turned her attention to the one on his face, the deeply-etched line that she had cut into him, the one that continued along a portion of his neck and shoulder into his chest.

                She remembered the shadow of that pain only too well.

                As he murmured something in his sleep, she reached out to take his face, fingertips light on his cheekbone. “Ben. Ben,” she called to him quietly, running her fingers through his hair before returning to his face. “Ben, wake up. You’re dreaming-”

                His hand streaked up and caught hold of her wrist, roughly yanking it from his face as he started awake. His dark eyes came open, his pinched face pale, and for a moment he didn’t seem to recognize his surroundings or the wrist he held in his grip. He snapped his head toward it, fingers squeezing tightly.

                Rey winced, her cheeks screwing upward, a hitched breath leaving her. “Ben,” she gasped faintly.

                Hearing her whisper, his eyes darted toward her and he blinked at her for a moment before he finally seemed to recognize her. Then he exhaled, his eyes closing. His head fell back to his pillow, his hand pulling her wrist to his mouth for a breath, lips shifting against her pulse before he lowered her hand to his chest with a sigh of relief, clutching it to him tightly.

                She recoiled. “Ben,” she uttered worriedly and she slid upward across the bed, slipping her wrist free of his grip to trail her thumb across his cheek and then down to his lips. “What happened? Are you okay?” she asked him anxiously.

                He swallowed, already composing himself and nodding, his mask slipping back into place. “Yes. Yes. I’m fine. I’m fine. Just…had a nightmare-”

                She took hold of his chin and forced him to look at her, which he did so with a bit of surprise in his eyes. “Don’t do that. You were having a hard time. Talk to me,” she pleaded with him.

                He pulled his chin free of her grip gently. “It was nothing,” he replied quietly and instead, he dug his arm under her ribs and waist, dragging her nude form tighter to his side. His other hand came up to grasp her face, his thumb pushing into the corner of her mouth as he pulled her down to him.

                Rey met his kiss and then sighed as he deepened it a moment later, as his tongue broke the seal of her lips. His breath was warm on hers, his fingers curling to dig into the tender skin of her neck.

                Not this time.

                “What was your nightmare about?” she asked him softly as she broke the kiss, as she asked the question against his mouth.

                He exhaled into the space between them, his tongue slipping out to wet his lips and brushing hers in the distracted gesture. “It was about my father,” he whispered and he bent toward her, his forehead coming to rest on hers.

                _Ah._

                “What about your father?” she asked, her mouth trailing along his as she spoke.

                He didn’t reply for a long moment, his jaw tightening, his fingers dancing across her cheek and temple. “Just…seeing it again, watching it happen again. Thinking that maybe it would be different this time even though I knew it wouldn’t be. That it would never be different and that he’s still gone.”

                Sighing, Rey carefully settled herself along his torso, her hand slipping to trail across the smooth lines of his chest. “I liked your father,” she murmured absentmindedly as she paused to remember the man. “You told me once that he would have disappointed me…but I don’t know that that’s true.”

                He swallowed faintly and his head fell away from hers, pushing into his pillow. “It isn’t,” he admitted with a sigh, fingers dancing across her cheek and jaw. He looked toward the window, to the moons outside. “He only ever disappointed me.”

                His words came lightly, softly. Painfully. She tilted her head at him, gauging his expression. His thoughts were hidden away from her then, which left her only with his physical reactions in an attempt to understand. “Why?” she asked him softly. “Why did he disappoint you?”

                His jaw clenched, lips tightening as he stared out the windows blindly. “Rey,” he stated warningly.

                “Ben,” she returned though there was no caution in her tone. Instead she laid her head down on his chest, sighing at his warmth and his scent as it rose up around her, as she drew in closer to him and pressed her ear to his heart.

                His arms instinctively curled up around her, his body relaxing beneath hers as he dug his fingers into her neck and hair.

                And as she murmured, “Tell me,” he could only settle wearily in her embrace, his form falling under her breast resignedly.

                Tentatively, he whispered in such a low tone that it merely thrummed in her ear, not enough to be heard properly. “He…didn’t understand. He didn’t understand me, didn’t understand the Force. Even though he knew my mother could wield it, that my uncle was a Jedi. He knew what it was but he couldn’t _grasp_ it, not even when I was born. He just…” He shrugged in her arms, his shoulders shifting with the gesture. “He just didn’t understand it and he didn’t understand _me_ , and he just…wanted me to be normal.”

                Rey frowned at that, her eyelashes fluttering along his chest and no doubt tickling him somewhat. “That can’t be true,” she said quietly. “You don’t know that-”

                He sighed beneath her edgily, his frame stiffening. “It’s true. I do know that. I…read it from him one day, straight from his head and it just…I…” He shook his head lightly along the pillow, his breathing becoming shallow. “I just knew then that…he didn’t know what to do with me. And he was constantly fighting with my mother as well over me, over how to deal with me. How would they raise me? How would they deal with me when I had this ability that he didn’t understand?”

                Rey’s vision blurred slightly at his words, at the hidden emotion in his voice though he was rigid beneath her.

                “And then they figured out _how_ to deal with me. They sent me with my uncle to train to be a Jedi. And…” he inhaled deeply, distantly. “And I didn’t care after a while. I had this voice in my head telling me to run from them all, that they couldn’t understand me, that they’d never understand me. That they couldn’t _teach_ me the way I needed to be taught. And I ran.”

                Rey stiffened slowly, his words coming to her from a snowy night on a long-gone planet.

                _“You need a teacher! I can show you the ways of the Force!”_

                Had he always wanted that for her as well then? To save her from those that didn’t understand the things they could do? Maybe then, maybe in that moment, he had wanted it. But when he had come after her later it had been because her life had been in danger and he hadn’t known how else to save her.

                “He never understood,” Ben whispered faintly, distractedly as he gazed out into the moonlit night. “I think he only understood at the end. Only _really_ understood then.” He paused, frowning lightly. “The same way I understood that…it wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t what I needed. That I wasn’t meant to…find my truth in his death, my path. That I, too, had been wrong this entire damn time.” And he fell under her wearily, his fingers weakening around her.

                Blinking rapidly, Rey lifted her hand and traced her fingertips along his chest lightly. What even was his truth then, she thought hazily. Would it always be the Dark even though there was Light in him? Would it be the Light without a sign of Dark? Or would it be a perfect shade of Gray, something that even she could understand? “Do you…do you regret what happened that night, then?” she asked him slowly, carefully.

                It took him just as long to respond, his breath catching and holding. “I do,” he whispered at last. “I regret that I did what I did, and that I didn’t understand that he actually cared for me, that I couldn’t see it. That he couldn’t show it to me and that I didn’t understand until he forgave me in the end, even after everything.” And he exhaled in a soft moan, his body shaking minutely as he breathed. “Even after _everything.”_

                Rey propped her head up on his chest, her chin digging into the hard plane, his fingers following her. “Did he?” she asked curiously, breathlessly, her hazel eyes focusing on him in wonder even as she felt his heartache beneath her figure.

                He nodded slightly, blindly. “He did. He forgave me as he died,” he whispered and his eyes slid shut, his brow furrowing as he turned away from the moonlight to face the shadow his body cast on the bed.

                It was shame she saw there, she realized. Pain. Regret. And of course he would find comfort, turn his eyes to the darkness to console himself, as it was all he had ever known when his entire dynasty of a family had seemingly abandoned him, even if it hadn’t been the case at all.

                What would she have done if he had said he hadn’t regretted it, she wondered in that moment, and she felt her heartbeat pick up and skip uneasily. She was already in love with him, she realized, her breath running thin on her as she thought of it. Would her morals have been enough to pull her away from him if he had remained the same person that had killed his father, that had murdered countless others all in the name of the First Order, of the Dark Side? Or would they have been compromised for him, accepting the darkness and even finding reason in it?

                She quickly nodded when she realized that she had held herself still in thought for far too long. She laid her head back down, blinking against his chest, listening to his heart beat rhythmically. And as she opened her fingers along his collarbones, trailing fingertips along his raised scars and tender flesh, she hesitated.

                They stood in silence for a long while, his breathing hitched until it finally fell back to a normal, though still shallow, rhythm. Rey wondered momentarily if he had fallen back to sleep but as she blinked resignedly she felt her senses expand, heard him in her head. His thoughts were running rampant, shaded with pain, agony even, though he lay silently beneath her.

                “Ben?” she questioned softly against his skin, warming it for it felt unbearably cold under her cheek.

                He made a small sound that he had heard her though he seemed distracted, weary.

                Swallowing slightly, she hesitated before speaking again. “W-why…when Snoke…when I have to see him,” she asked tentatively. “Why do you always show me the sun and the grass? Those meadows? Why that?” And she shook her head slightly in confusion. “I lived on a desert planet my whole life. How did you know that those things, those _images_ , that they would comfort me?”

                He tilted his head and stared down at her for a long moment, his expression softening, his fingers slipping along her cheek. “You haven’t lived on that planet your entire life,” he corrected her gently and his eyes fell to her lips, glazing over momentarily.

                She lifted her head and tilted it at him. “Of course I have,” she whispered to him, frowning slightly.

                He smiled faintly and his thumb slid over her bottom lip, bringing her to part them for him, for his kiss that she knew he wanted to gift her. “No,” he murmured quietly and he raised his eyes to hers as his thumb trailed absently. “You have a Coruscant accent. You may not know where you came from before you were left on Jakku, but you had another home.”

                She blinked at him rapidly and her eyes fell to his lips distractedly as she felt a thought travel through her head.

                _And now I have a home with you..?_

                He sighed beneath her, his expression becoming tender.

                She didn’t know if he had heard her words in her head but a moment later she was rising off his chest and leaning up toward him.

                He accepted her kiss blindly and then fully, his lips parting, his tongue sweeping hers with a soft groan.

                And deep within his thoughts, slipping past the surface ones that merely craved her and wanted to touch her, _feel_ her, she saw the answer to her earlier question, to her request for information.

                Images of him as a small boy running through fields of green grass and wildflowers, of lifting his head to the sun and closing his eyes to breathe the world in. To feel the whole of the galaxy fall into place as he opened himself to the Force, as he searched for consolation, a haven, as he fought to forget the words of his father, the look of sorrow on his mother’s face, always and constantly.

                _It’s my safe place. No one could ever reach me there. It was the only place I could escape to, to escape **him**._

                And now he had shared his refuge with her.

                The thought caused her to squeeze her eyes shut as they flooded with tears, as she returned his kiss, the brush of his tongue and the desire building within him for her. “He can’t reach you here,” she murmured against his lips. “He can’t reach either of us here, between us, even if he knows my name. Your name. He can’t touch us here. We can fight him, we can hide from him and push him away. You and me, together. We can do it.”

                And then the conversation was over as she tilted her head to deepen the kiss, as his hand slipped down her back toward her rear to graze it gently, yearningly. But even if their words were done, she was unwilling to back down.

                Pulling back, she separated from him, dropping her chin to look at him intently.

               He frowned lightly, his thumb still swishing back and forth across the corner of her mouth. “What is it?” he asked her in a low, husky tone.

                That voice of his sent shivers through her, bringing her to break out into goose bumps. “Nothing,” she whispered, and as he lifted his head in doubt, she merely rose onto her knees over him. Her hand dropped back to his chest and she pushed down on him easily.

                He fell back down to the bed, still seemingly confused, but then she pulled free of the bed sheets and swung a lithe thigh over his waist, straddling him.

                She could only smile when he released a soft curse under his breath. His hands immediately moved toward her nude form over his but she caught both of his wrists and pushed them back down to the bed on either side of his head, her body throwing him into shadow as she blocked the moonlight from his pale skin. “No,” she stated firmly, staring down at him. “It’s my turn.”

                She caught the mental curse that he threw out in his head as well, but as she released his wrists, he kept them where she had placed them. Tilting her head, she watched as she trailed her fingertips from one wrist down along his forearm and then traced the defined line of his bicep lightly. He even had scars on the inside of his arms and it slowed her for a second as she paused to wonder how it had happened, her other hand coming to rest on his chest for support.

                He waited, his desire dimming somewhat as he watched her take notice of his scars.

                Instead, she leaned down over him and pressed her lips to a thin dark line of scarred flesh, feeling its change in texture and shape under her kiss. His heat rose from his chest and arms, blazing, and she caught his scent in the air then as well, as she slid her mouth down his bicep, her tongue slipping out to taste him.

                He shuddered slightly under her touch, his breath escaping him roughly.

               What an erotic reaction, she thought in that moment as she slipped further down along his arm, as she opened her mouth to lap at his skin.

                He cursed aloud once more, his head turned toward her. “Rey,” he uttered in such a way that she thought it held a hint of threat, of caution, in its tone.

                She ignored the warning. “Not this time,” she murmured along his flesh, feeling her breath reverberate between his arm and her lips. “You’ve had quite enough fun-”

                His other hand came up to take hold of her by the back of her neck and she leaned low before he pulled her up roughly to meet his mouth. The kiss was hungry, desperate, and she returned it, molding herself down to him only momentarily, only long enough to satisfy his desire for her mouth. Then she yanked herself free, pushing away from him with the one hand pressed to his chest, and she went for his neck instead. She wanted to breathe him in, wanted to see where his natural scent emanated from, where she could inhale it and capture him perfectly in her mind. And she wanted to kiss that same spot on his neck that always drove her mad when he did it to her, wanted to see if they shared that same sensitive point.

                They did, and she sighed into his neck as he exhaled beneath her yearningly, as he turned his head away to give her whatever she wanted, whatever she needed. She dragged her tongue along the line of his neck, pushing her palms into his chest to slide down his body as she trailed her mouth along his shoulder and then his chest, biting gently at his nipple the way he did to her when she was already half blind with arousal.

                His breath came harshly, his neck shifting as he swallowed, as he held himself still under her ministrations.

                He was hard between her legs and she carefully slid her hips down past him, careful to avoid such a sensitive piece of him. But as she bent her lips to the flat span of his chest and ribs, she felt him pressing into her belly and then her torso, between her breasts as she lowered herself down his body. He quivered under her mouth, his hand still tangled in her hair as it fanned out across his pelvis.

                “Rey,” he said once more and this time his tone was distressed, guarded. “Rey-”

                She slid along his waist to his hips, burying her face into that hard V line and licking down that curve as her fingers traced its twin.

                And then her fingers reached his hardness and lifted up its length lightly as she pressed a kiss to the junction between pelvis and thigh.

                He jumped slightly at her caress, and as she raised her eyes to look at him, she watched as he settled limply on the bed, as he pushed his head back into his pillow roughly, weakly. Surrendering to her.

                Curious, trailing her tongue along the line again, she opened her mind wide to him.

                His thoughts were in disarray. He wanted everything she was doing to him, wanted it and more; wanted to stop her in mid-caress and yank her up to seat her on his stiffness and impale her deeply. Wanted to watch her ride him, wanted to touch her gently and then roughly as she brought him to submit between her thighs. He wanted to take hold of her and push her to the bed at his side, to climb on top and bury himself inside of her forcefully for making him beg for her, for playing with him so callously.

                As if she could be cruel to him.

                But as she bent to take him into her mouth, all thoughts flew away leaving him with only desire and anguish. And as she brought her hand to stimulate him as well, he could only lie back and give her whatever she craved, allow her to do whatever she wanted with him because she could kill him with her lips and tongue alone and he would still die thankfully.

                And he did so then, willingly and contentedly.

 

                The next morning found him awake quite early. He stretched lazily beside Rey, who slept on, before sitting up along the bed to look out his windows to the sun. He had dimmed the opacity which allowed him to see the sun but still cast the room into shade, blocking the strongest of the sun’s rays.

                He loved the sun nonetheless. It brought him back to his early childhood days when he would toss himself to the grass with the wildflowers all around, inhaling the sweet scent of nature and realizing that nothing could find him here, nothing could take this place from him.

                This refuge.

                Glancing over his bare shoulder toward Rey, he found another type of sun in his own bed and his expression relaxed as he watched her sleep.

                She had dragged the bed sheets back over her body after she had brought him to climax during the night, stripping him of his own sheets as was her way. Now she had them all bunched up against her chest, her body curled around her arms with her spine to the windows. He had gone to sleep with her smooth back pressed into his chest, with his heavy body surrounding her and claiming her as his.

                Turning to look back at the sun, he hesitated before nodding.

                Today would be a day of training if he could just get the feel and sensation of her lips out of his head. And, the Force help him, after this last night, it would be a very difficult thing for him to accomplish.

 

                She was still hampering herself.

                He frowned slightly as she glared at the staff he had placed in front of her. He had asked her to levitate the weapon toward her form using the Force. She continued to attempt it with brute force, which he was not in opposition to, but which he knew would not specifically help her.

                He gazed at her as she focused on the staff, his expression softening. She was too pure, much too attuned to the Light. And it brought a small pain to his chest but he would not allow it to overcome him. She operated whichever way worked best for her and if she geared toward the Light, he would do nothing to diminish that.

                He merely wanted her to be extraordinary, whether it be through the Dark side or the Light.

                “Don’t force it,” he murmured as he leaned in, and the action was regrettable for he caught her scent as he hovered beside her ear, and she smelled delectable. Closing his eyes to compose himself, he continued, “There is no reason to force it, not for you. Call to it. Ask for it. Reach deep inside of yourself, breathe in, and listen to the voices in your head.”

                Her eyes flickered toward him so close, an eyebrow arching. “Because that doesn’t sound strange at all,” she stated flippantly though she did turn her attention back to the staff. And this time her gaze fell blankly, her hazel eyes hovering over the staff before she breathed in deeply, her eyelids slipping shut.

                _Yes_ , he thought and he tilted his head at her and waited.

                Her thoughts were airy, incomprehensible as she reached within herself, as she pulled from her core. But he listened as she found her way toward the ethereal voices within herself, racing along with her blood; the hum that made up her body and self, that made up the world around them both. That drew them together.

                The midi-chlorians.

                A second later, her eyes came open and he had already turned to look at the staff; just in time to see the weapon lift into the air shakily and then slowly cross the small distance to land in her palm. He felt a smile curl his lips as she became aware once more, as she looked down at the staff in her hand in disbelief.

                “I did it,” she whispered in wonder.

                “You did,” he agreed with a nod and he looked at her. “Why are you surprised?”

                She blinked rapidly at the weapon in her hand before turning to meet his gaze. “Because…because I…I didn’t…” And she hesitated, her eyes dropping before flickering back up toward his, only to dart away.

                _Ah._

                “Because you tapped into the Light side and not the Dark,” he said for her and he leaned forward once more, pressing his face into her neck to breathe her in, to settle happily in her warmth, to placate the need that had risen within him.

               She sighed, turning her jaw into his cheek as his lips nipped at her skin, as he brushed that duplicitous little spot that always made her weak. “But you…you directed me to go by way of the Light,” she whispered distractedly, her fingers loosening on the staff. “You-”

                He pulled away slightly from her neck, brushing his mouth along her cheek. “It’s your strength. The Dark side won’t help you with that. Not with the way you are, the person you are,” he murmured to her huskily and he lifted a hand to clasp the other side of her face, pressing his mouth to her skin yearningly as his thumb trailed along her lips, parting them and feeling her exhale heavily along the tip.

                How could he constantly want her? Every moment of every day, he found his thoughts returning to her, to the point that he could barely function. How had this happened?

                “But…it’s the way _you_ are,” she sighed against his thumb absently, and she drew away from him a moment later, causing his lips to drift over her cheek.

                He paused, his hand hovering over her jaw, fingers trailing the fine line of it. “Yes,” he replied quietly.

                She swallowed at his response, lowering her head so that his fingers floated over her cheek and temple instead. “And will you…will you always…be the Dark?” she asked tentatively.

                He exhaled softly, his dark eyes trailing over her brow and eyes, her straight nose and perfect freckles. “Maybe. Probably. Yes,” he answered her and he felt something clench in his chest at his own response, at her reaction as sadness crossed her face for a quick moment before it disappeared.

               She sat up straight then, her expression becoming firm as she stared out blindly across the floor. “Then we are halves of the same,” she said, stating it with a firm nod of her head before tilting her cheek back into his palm.

                And in that moment, he loved her. He _loved_ her.

                His lips came open at her words, a shiver running through him. _Yes_ , he realized. If she would have him, if she could somehow accept him, then yes. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

                He had leaned in toward her once more, breathlessly, when the console beeped and the doors slid open, admitting the red-haired general.

                Rey streaked away from Ben, turning to look over her shoulder. The moment she saw the general, her entire body stiffened, her brows drawing low into a scowl.

                Beside her, Ben mirrored her reaction, though he seemed somehow bigger and harder, his voice dropping but still coming out aloof as his hand fell into his lap. “General. To what do we owe the pleasure?” he asked sardonically and the man that sat beside Rey was no longer the same man that had been there a second before.

                This was Kylo Ren once more; unmasked but still the Master of the Knights of Ren.

                “Ren,” the general stated and he paused by the doorway in his long black overcoat, his pale skin and red hair a deep contrast to the darkness. “A word.”

                A muscle clenched in the knight’s jaw but he exhaled, turning to look at her blindly. “A moment,” he asked of her softly and he rose to his feet and crossed the training room silently, long uniform swirling around his legs.

                Rey watched him go and then turned back around to look at the staff in her hand. Realizing she still held it, she placed it down gingerly to the mat before her as she heard the general and commander converse. She avoided reaching out with her thoughts, instead crossing her legs in tighter and bowing her head.

                A better moment than none to do some meditation while she waited for Ben to return, she thought, as she attempted to empty her head of everything around and delve in deep within herself.

                It wasn’t much longer before the general turned and left the room in a stomp. Then the knight was at her side once more, falling beside her to one knee.

                She opened her eyes and lifted her head to look at him over her shoulder, blinking curiously.

                “I am going to meet with the Supreme Leader,” he said to her quietly, his dark eyes heavy.

                Her expression immediately dimmed with worry. “Ben,” she whispered painfully, haltingly.

                “I won’t be long,” he murmured, shushing her. “Come. I will take you back to my quarters.” And he reached out to pick the staff up from the floor, rising to his feet before holding a hand out to her.

                She accepted it, also standing and waiting as he released her hand to place the weapon in its storage case. Then he returned to her, his body coming to stand before hers. His hands reached for her wrists and then her own hands, holding them for the smallest breath, intertwining his fingers with hers.

                It was a fleeting moment but a gesture that she needed, a gesture that brought her to want him then painfully.

                But he released her hands, falling away from her and then looking toward her as she composed herself. When they left the room, they needed to continue the masquerade of Master and Apprentice even when all they wanted was each other; physically, mentally, emotionally.

                Turning, he led her and she followed behind, leaving the room to return to his quarters.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Thirty-Four: **

He entered his suite and the door shut behind him with that soft breath of air, encasing them in a darkness so complete that she lost him for a long moment as the moonlight was dim in his bedroom.

Then she heard him shuffle and his savage lightsaber flared to life.

 


	35. Chapter Thirty-Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys...I'm freaking out. We're so close to the end! 
> 
> I hope this chapter puts some of you guys at ease because...wow. I stressed you guys out BAD with that last chapter preview. So sorry!! It wasn't my intention! But I think you'll like this chapter because...well, SMUT! But since we're getting to the end, it revs the story up for the next two chapters and then the epilogue. Hope you guys like it! And thank you all for cheering me up so immensely. Your comments and crazy wild imaginations and witty scenarios are amazing and always crack me up. I look forward to them so much, you all have no idea.
> 
> P.S. - I explain in the next chapter (not this one), why Ben reacted in this way in this chapter, what made him snap.
> 
> Enjoy!

Chapter Thirty-Four:

 

                She was drawn from meditation almost forcefully hours later, her thoughts slowly becoming disjointed until they were suddenly loud, chaotic in her own head. But it wasn’t her, she realized a moment later, grimacing as the anger increased until it was all she felt in her very own body; she couldn’t turn from it, couldn’t calm herself down.

                Why was he suddenly so angry? What had happened?

                Blinking and wincing at the utter rage she felt swelling inside, she rose to her feet blindly, looking to move. The dark slip she’d dressed in after her shower allowed her free movement, her limbs sliding fluidly under it. But she couldn’t sit and stew; it wasn’t what she needed. She needed to let this anger out, needed to somehow work it off or she would lock it away. And then another day would come and if she did the same, she would lock it away as well and let it build, let it simmer and stew until…until…

                Until she became like him, she realized; constantly needing an outlet, always siphoning her if he couldn’t find it.

                This was his doing; his anger, his inability to deal with emotions and things that didn’t agree with him or didn’t follow his specific instruction. It was happening now and on such a large scale that she almost couldn’t function, couldn’t find a breath as she stumbled against the wall and bowed her head to it, her shoulders quivering, her fingers clawing into talons and itching to dig into the metal surface furiously.

                The door to his suite slid open, swishing quietly and allowing a shaft of light into the darkness from the sterile hallway.

                She swung around, a grimace twisting her cheeks and brow, and she faced him almost wildly.

                He merely stood in the doorway, his black-clothed figure heaving as if he had run the entire way back to his suite, his cold helmet already trained on her.

                “What happened?” she rasped out, practically spitting at him.

                He entered his suite and the door shut behind him with that soft breath of air, encasing them in a darkness so complete that she lost him for a long moment as the moonlight was dim in his bedroom.

                Then she heard him shuffle and his savage lightsaber flared to life.

                Rey stumbled backward in disbelief, her eyes moving from the jagged light of the weapon to his helmet, the black metal and chrome reflecting the glow of the lightsaber menacingly. “What are you doing?” she asked almost inaudibly, her frame going cold.

                With a tightening to his body, he lifted the weapon and swung furiously. His swipe took out the nearest lamp table, severing the legs from the surface, the entire thing falling to pieces to the floor with a clatter.

                Rey recoiled away, her eyes dropping to the broken table before darting back to him warily.

                Wordlessly, he swung again and this time he neatly took off a chunk of the sofa, slicing away a section of the head and almost panting as the piece flew, as the padding floated around him in his sudden display of violence.

                As Rey watched, he lifted his saber overhead and brought it down on the couch over and over, swinging like an animal, the piece of furniture practically exploding in pale stuffing.

                “Stop-” she uttered and then she streaked forward, moving to the opposite side of the couch and shouting. _“Stop!”_

                His attacks halted when he swung close enough to have her flinch backward at the proximity of the swipe. Only then did he stop and simply look at her from behind his helmet, heaving in the silence.

                Breathing erratically, she lifted her eyes to stare at him though she only felt an alien presence from him. Panting, she looked down at the destroyed couch before looking at him once more. “Why are you so angry?” she asked him breathlessly. And when he merely stood silent in the face of her question, she took one last step, pushing against the remains of the sofa to face him directly. “Talk to me. Let me help you. Let me _help_ you-”

                His shoulders lifted as he breathed in deeply, the gesture one of anger, of animosity, and it caused her to pause.

                She felt anger rise within herself, too, which she immediately blamed on him. The slightest provocation, the smallest hint of resentment from her would immediately work off his, would force it to rise inside of herself as well. They shared emotions, shared such a bond that she had a hard time now differentiating between the two of them, and she _hated_ it. She hated that she could feel him in everything she was in moments like these, that he would use her, that without even thinking he could draw from her when he desired, when it would most benefit him, when she could barely provide for _herself_.

                He needed to learn to draw from himself, to control himself.

                Well, now would’ve been a perfect time and instead _she_ was drawing from _him_ , working them both up instead of calming him down to a tranquil state.

                With a hard shake of her head, she slid away from the destroyed couch and took a step closer to him.

                He stiffened slightly, the hand holding the lightsaber tightening a fraction.

                “Take it out on me,” she demanded, her back straightening purposefully. “Use me. Take your anger out on me. Let me help you overcome it.”

               He merely watched her from behind his helmet, his shoulders heaving with his breath under his heavy uniform, so stiff that it unnerved her.

                “Let me help you,” she said again, feeling the same shared anger start to boil over, her arms beginning to harden as she fought to hold it in check. Anywhere else and she would’ve blown up already; but to do it here knowing that he was her only link and lifeline in this place, she couldn’t chance it. “Come on. You want to fight? I’ll help you. Let’s go practice or work out. Or whatever is going to-”

                His sudden movements caused her to break off in mid-sentence, her heart threatening to jump into her throat. He lifted his hand to his helmet, flicking the switch to cause it to disengage and come free. As it hissed open, he yanked it off and lowered it to his side, his pale face pinched in cold anger, dark waves curling around his temples and jaw.

                Rey swallowed slightly, gauging him. “What happened?” she asked him again in a breath of a whisper.

                Wordlessly, he allowed the helmet to fall to the floor with a hard thud and she flinched at the sound, following it with her eyes as it rolled away slightly. Then she lifted her gaze back to him warily, her lips parting.

                He inhaled deeply, his anger radiating off his body so completely that she was uncertain whether she felt it from him physically or mentally. All she knew was that it was a struggle to not allow his darkness to settle over her and consume her as well. But she was faltering slightly, grimacing as she fought to maintain control.

                With a shift of his hand, the red lightsaber dimmed into stillness, vanishing and throwing the room into darkness. The only light now came from the moonlight filtering in through his windows in his bedroom and even that faint light wasn’t enough for her to see him well enough.

                Which was why she didn’t realize he had moved until he had her by the arm. One moment, he was several feet away. The next, he was right before her, his fingers clenched around her upper arm so tightly she grimaced from the grip. A small sound escaped her and she quickly lifted her head to search him out in the faint darkness, her entire body becoming rigid.

                “Then help me,” he said to her softly, his mouth somehow inches away from hers, his breath warm along her skin.

                She swallowed, wishing to fight him off, to throw his grasp off her. Half of her knew that it stemmed from anger and from self-preservation. Her other half had already offered her help to calm him, to bring him back to stability. “What do you need from me?” she asked him softly, aware that her breath hovered between them because of his proximity.

                He hesitated, his grip tightening on her arm for a moment and causing her to wince at his strength.

                Then he spoke and his words were hard, his entire body trembling from such anger and need that it took her breath away.

                “Just you.”

                And before she could say anything, he pulled her after him as he moved toward his bedroom.

                She should’ve understood immediately but she hadn’t been able to grasp anything through the haze of anger that permeated from him, the simmering rage. The desire to work the frustration off. She could only follow blindly as he yanked her into his bedroom, as he waved a hand toward the door to close it almost soundlessly, shutting them both away from the rest of the suite.

                Then he released her, yanking his overcoat off, the tatters trailing over his face as she looked at him hesitantly. He tossed it aside to the floor and he had rid himself of enough layers before she realized what he was doing, what he needed.

                _“Just you.”_

                Now she understood. And while she also understood his need to relieve his tension, his _anger_ , she was guarded as to what would happen, what he would do, and how violent he would be in getting what he needed even as she somehow knew that he would not hurt her.

                Stripping himself of his uniform, he faced her, half nude save for the trousers.

                She found that she still had a hard time looking at him and not desiring him. Even when she had dreamt of him at home on the Resistance base, she had wanted him. And his anger here and now, while intimidating, still made her want him, _crave_ him; reminding her of how they had begun their entire affair. What did that say about her, she wondered almost anxiously as he took a step closer, as his scent suddenly assaulted her, trailing off his body with his heat. She breathed him in yearningly even as she questioned herself, her eyelashes fluttering. What did it say about her that she would find his anger comforting? Familiar and calming, non-threatening? She had become accustomed to him coming to her and to being so angry though still not a danger to her, that she almost felt as if she didn’t know him any other way.

                In fact, did she know him at all?

                _How sad to know that someone who loved you would only know your anger._

                The thought slid away into nothingness as his arms rose toward her. She fought from pulling away, from recoiling.

                And maybe he sensed it. Or maybe he didn’t and he only saw what he needed. But when his hands came down on her, they were rough. Not as rough as she had expected, she realized, as his fingers closed around her arms and then turned her body away from him forcibly.

                She spun to face the wall-length transparisteel windows, looking out into woods and darkness, to the moonlight as it fell on her. His fingers slid along her arms from behind but now they traced down their length to grasp her wrists. She frowned as he did so but a second later she had a picture in her head, an image that she had pulled from his mind, and her brow cleared as she understood.

                A moment after that, the vision became reality as he lifted her arms and pushed her palms to the cool glass of the windows, squeezing them as an indication that she was to keep them there and only there. Her lips parted at how open she felt then, exposed to him under the short slip as he moved behind her, as his gestures caused small sounds that she couldn’t decipher. Her eyes darted around, barely taking in the scenery outside the windows, not even registering the cool light of the moons. Her heart was beating much too fast even as the slight tendrils of lasting anger hovered deep down inside. What did she feel, she wondered in blind confusion. Panic? Worry? Dread? All of them, because he was moving behind her and she couldn’t quite grasp from the sounds or from his fleeting thoughts what it was that he was doing. It unnerved her. It caused her to stiffen, to search her reflection and then seek him out in that same mirror image as his dim figure moved behind her pale form. The fight or flight instinct was threatening to rise deep inside as she watched him, his light skin contrasting against his black waves of hair, the blurred pinch of his mouth and jaw.

                One hand took hold of her hip and tightened, abruptly pulling her backward so that she was bent against the window, her back arching. His other hand brushed along her opposite thigh, trailing upward and dragging her slip up. Anger thrummed through his body although now there was an underlying current of want, of frantic need. Of _desire_. Her lips parted and she blinked rapidly as he bunched the slip around her waist. Never had she felt as exposed as she did then, for him to look at her, to allow his eyes to sweep over her.

                What did he see? What did he _want_ to see? Was he disappointed?

                The thought caused her eyes to slide shut tightly as she berated herself stupidly. It didn’t matter whether he did or not, whether he enjoyed the view or honestly didn’t give a damn. He was angry enough that he needed to release pent up anger and his rage was draining her such that if he didn’t work it off, she wouldn’t be able to sleep or function herself. She would be awake for the entire night and-

                His mouth came close to her ear as he brushed up behind her, his body pressing to her intimately. “You could never disappoint me,” he whispered, his breath warm, his tone so deep it sent tremors through her, reverberated so profoundly she was almost certain it soothed her very soul. And then his hand was shifting along her rear, clothes rustling as he moved.

                She had a moment to regain her breath, to turn to question him over her shoulder, before she felt the head of him rub against her center. The feel of him caused her to stiffen against her will even as she found herself wanting it, wanting _him_. It was the anger, she realized dimly, her fingers curling against the window in anticipation. Feelings and senses heightened, the electricity in the air. The need to expel something that was building up, to do away with it before it burst. This was what he needed, what _she_ needed because of him.

                And she would be damned before she said she didn’t want him right then.

                A moment later he was pushing in, first gently to widen her and then, upon finding her already wet, shoving in with one hard thrust and driving all thought from her mind with the one fluid movement.

                The motion brought her mouth to fall open in a hitched breath, her heart quickening, a soft cry breaking from her lips. She had been ready for him to begin with and she suddenly felt full, so very complete, and she didn’t question the fact that it was him to do it to her. He was seated so deep within her she was sure that he was an extension of her, so hard and perfect that she knew in that moment that she never wanted him to leave.

                He pulled out slowly with a soft groan, seeming to revel in the feel of her before pushing forward once more roughly. The motion pushed her palms flat into the window surface, brought her to gasp at the sensation. His hands shoved her slip past her hips and to her waist to collect in a pool before he slid his palms along the sides of her body. Hovering deep inside of her, he trailed his hands down to her hips and then latched on, fingers tight on her skin, a vise on her curves, before retreating and then holding her to thrust back in.

                This time, as his hips rammed tightly against her, another soft sound left her lips, her mouth rounding into an o. She felt his anger reverberating throughout his entire body, traveling into his hands and transferring into her. But even as his body seemed to tremble inside of her, she felt his anger begin to slide, felt calmness reach gently for him. She held herself stiff, her fingers slowly curling against the window as his hands slid across her skin, as they reached for more of her, as they grasped helplessly.

                He desired the stillness desperately, she understood. He reached for it as he reached for her, and her body welcomed him in response, lamenting him when he pulled out reluctantly.

                His hips slapped against hers once more roughly, bringing a louder cry from her before he began to move in a hard rhythm. His hands were tight on her hips, fingers digging in painfully, and she found that she relished the forceful thrust of his hips, the hardness caught within, how deeply he seemed to search with every plunge. She still didn’t know what had angered him to begin with but the fury, while still there, was slowly diminishing, vanishing with each thrust that forced her against the window. Each pump of his hips hit a spot deep inside of her, a subtle point that pulsed as it was touched, as it was caressed. She dropped her head, her hair falling around her face at the sensation as she tried to understand what it was that she felt.

                One of his hands left her hips and took hold of her face, forcing it up. “Open your eyes,” he uttered as he thrust into her, as he shook her body.

                She did as he asked, feeling somewhere deep inside that she had always hated receiving commands. But somehow, with him, she was willing to hear his voice and do as he asked because she had long ago placed her trust in his voice, in _him_. As she lifted her head toward the window, his fingers tight on her chin, she opened her eyes and focused.

                She was pale in the moonlight streaming in. How many moons did this planet have again? She was reflected then almost as if the sun shone down on her, playing off her skin and lighting her brilliantly. But the moonlight lit her ethereally, her body and the material of her gray slip, the curve of her breasts beneath the trim. His thrusts shoved her into the transparisteel surface, brought her to gasp and then moan as he stroked that elusive spot deep inside of her, as his anger was quelled with each shove of his hips against her rear and thighs.

                He was just as pale behind her, more so, reflected blurrily in the moonlight as he moved but she found that the entire vision playing out before her was far more erotic than she had been prepared for even in its indistinctness. Her hands slid down across the surface of the window and she used them to slowly straighten slightly, to lift herself so that she was no longer prostrate but angled, adjusting the slant in which he penetrated her. His breaths convinced her that he appreciated her shift and that tender spot deep inside of her wanted it as well but she wanted to see him, wanted to catch his reflection and focus on it, memorize it.

                Keep it.

                His hand slid away from her face to drop down to her breasts as they bounced with each thrust of his hips, skimming their roundness outside of the slip. It slipped lower even as she ached to capture it in hers and hold it to her breast, to clutch it to her heart, sweeping the length of her torso before teasing her pelvis with deft fingers. And then, his hand streaking out, he yanked one of hers off the window and wrapped his fingers around it almost carefully.

                Almost. Almost-

                Her body trembled, beginning to reach for something that she didn’t consciously understand though she recognized it in a primal sense. He was hot along her back, almost burning her with his heat, and as she tried to focus he was pushing her to straighten further. His hand lowered hers to her thigh, dragged it up even as he thrust into her roughly. She let him move her around blindly, her eyes shut tightly once more, her legs beginning to tremble from sensation.

                His hand pushed hers between her legs, half entwining as he shifted his fingers between hers to delve into her core.

                His touch nearly bowed her legs in sudden weakness and she felt a cry leave her lips, trailing into the stillness of the dark room and hovering, hovering as if she approached the very edge of a cliff. His fingers rubbed at the very center of her, sliding wetly, and now his body was pressing even tighter to hers, her figure pushing forward to straighten. His scent hovered around her, his breath in her ear, his smooth skin sliding along hers, burning. She found herself following his fingers with her own, reaching dimly and feeling a shiver race through her as she felt where he met her, where he pulled out and pushed back in almost brutally.

                A tremor went through her as she felt him crave her movements, of her desire to feel him, to reach for him. She knew nothing of men, of their desires or their needs, but she was beginning to understand the man at her back and he desired _her_. In any way, at any time, at any cost that would allow him to have her.

                The thought caused her to falter slightly, her eyes blinking open slightly even as her legs threatened to drop her.

                He hadn’t stopped moving, though, and she was now straight, pressed against his window as he thrust into her. His hard movements almost lifted her off her feet, her body teetering on her tiptoes. As she found herself disoriented by her thoughts, he brought her back, his fingers now wrapping around hers and forcing her to move against the sensitive center of her.

                She realized that she couldn’t focus at all. His body was hard around her, encasing her in a strong vise with his arms, his chest firm at her back, his skin practically searing hers. She turned her head toward him and felt his mouth along her cheek, her temple, his fingers showing her how to pleasure herself as he thrust into her again and again, stroking that perfect spot deep inside with each pulse of his hips. Never had she felt as close to him as she did then, his hard frame pressed to hers, his hips pushing into hers with every thrust, taking her with him as he pulsed. He could have lifted her in his arms and taken her away and she would’ve let him just as long as he didn’t _leave_ her. Her heart was pounding, her nerves on fire, her body moving outside of her control, reacting to him and needing everything he gave her.

                He knew her body better than she did, she realized dimly.

                A soft groan left his lips at her ear and he dropped his forehead against the back of her head as he loved her, as he moved deep inside of her, his figure trapping her to the window. He wanted her to touch herself, wanted to feel her desire, to understand what she needed because then they would learn together even if he already seemed to know her inside and out.

                He didn’t want it to be just for him.

                The fleeting thought drew a cry from her, desperate, and she showed him what she needed with her fingers, her hand guiding him. He had touched her like this once in a dream, in a nightly visit, she now remembered. And he had learned then how to touch her to have her reaching for him after, yearning for him. Now she showed him what she knew of her own body, what would cause her to cry out, to move shamelessly, to follow her desires.

                He breathed almost painfully against her as she did, his head turning to hers as his hips pushed against hers, as she took him in and then seemed to mourn his loss when he pulled out of her.

                “Here. Here,” she whispered, her breath fogging the window as she spoke against it, and she grimaced as he moved the way she wanted him to, the way she needed him to. She attempted to show him more, to guide him further, but she realized a moment later that she didn’t need to anymore because he was picking up her words from her head, caressing her exactly where and how she needed. She moaned helplessly, her hand leaving his to its own devices and streaking up to grasp him by the waving hair at the nape of his neck. “Yes,” she murmured breathlessly, her voice breaking as a wave of need flashed through her at the stroke of his fingers, as she felt a shiver begin so deep inside, at every brush of him within her. “ _Yes-_ ”

                His other hand streaked to the window and met hers, encasing it fully as his hand was larger than hers. But then he was entwining his fingers with hers and pushing their joined grasp together into the transparisteel, his body wrapping around her fully inside and out.

                “You’re close,” he whispered against her ear, his tongue trailing against the long line of her neck. “I feel it, I feel you around me. You’re so close-”

                His words fell on deaf ears as her peak suddenly took her over.

                For a moment she didn’t understand the sensation. His fingers on her, the stroke and caress to that sensitive spot between her thighs, normally weakened her. But the release came from deep inside, somehow stronger.

                Shattering.

                Her gasp caused her entire torso to tighten, her mind no longer aware. She felt her body stiffen to the point of pain, her limbs freezing as she felt the first wave wash over her, complete and overpowering.

                At her back, he buried his face into the nape of her neck, freezing as well.

                She convulsed around him, seizing roughly and clamping down on him seated deep within her. The waves of her orgasm were stronger than she had become accustomed to, rippling outward from somewhere deep inside and threatening to drown her in sensation. Someone was crying out, a high keening sound, and she realized that the sound was coming from her own mouth, trailing out of her dimly and floating in the silence surrounding them.

                And then his frame became hard at her back, his arms around her tightening fiercely enough to convince her that she could break, that he could snap her in half from such a violent release if he wasn’t careful.

                He cursed in a breath against her ear, his body straining behind her.

                _What is happening_ , she asked mindlessly as waves of pleasure washed over her, as she felt him come, his hips struggling to push even deeper into her as he began to empty himself inside of her.

                His hand squeezed hers against the window, his arm trembling with hers as he released all of himself within her, as he moved senselessly along her smaller frame. His hips still moved against her and it only made her own climax draw out, that stroke of him deep inside of her, caressing that perfect little spot. She gasped in a breath, whimpering as another wave swept her body, causing her to constrict around him, to force him to embrace her even more tightly.

                They were going to die here together in a never-ending climax.

                He shifted slightly, his breath warm as he huffed out a short laugh. “It wouldn’t be a terrible way to go,” he said softly and his words died away into a long groan that sent shivers through her shoulder, through her entire body at its huskiness.

                She agreed, her torso heaving, shivering as the waves became ripples, lessening.

                That hadn’t been a usual climax, she said to herself wearily, and she dropped her head back along his jaw, her body trembling against her will. Her legs shook as well and she knew that she would have fallen had it not been for his firm embrace and hard figure supporting her.

                He merely breathed along her hair in response, regaining himself though she noticed that he did not hurry to release her nor pull free of her. In fact, he seemed perfectly content to stay exactly where they stood, holding her tightly to his chest and buried deep within her.

                Rey found that she did not disagree with him. In that moment, there was no other place she wanted to be and with no one else. And it was that thought that scared her in the end. Still heaving for a single clear breath, she felt that same fear ripple inside of her, causing her body to abruptly break out into gooseflesh.

                He seemed to feel her sudden change for he also stiffened slightly, his touch becoming hesitant.

              When had it happened? When had he become her comfort in this dark place, this planet that he had whisked her off to and trapped her in? When had his touch and his embrace become the things she had needed, not only to survive in this place but even outside of it? Because if she ever managed to leave this place-

                She needed him to follow her when she went, wherever she went. And she didn’t think he ever would or even _could_.

                His arms loosened further, his entire frame stiffening once more

                She didn’t want that either, though. She didn’t want him to leave her in that moment, to become Kylo Ren again, to leave her bereft.

                Even as she thought it, he straightened along her back and then stepped away brusquely; pulling free of her warmth abruptly, leaving her so suddenly and completely that she felt a single moment of utter devastation.

                Then she cried out shakily as her legs took the brunt of her emotion. They trembled once before finally giving out on her, buckling under her weight. He had left her so weak she wasn’t even surprised that her body would abandon her in his wake. She staggered backward, instinctively reaching out for something to grasp for support but her hands slid through mere air.

                He caught her from behind, his arms clutching her against his chest firmly as she toppled backward into him.

                She turned her head to look up at him with wide eyes as she found her weight supported by him once more, her back resting across his torso. Just when she needed him.

                He merely met her gaze for a long silent moment, his hair waving across his forehead and temples. Then he bent into her slightly and wrapped an arm under the back of her knees, hefting her up, dark eyes darting to her legs as they trembled finely in his embrace.

                Rey swallowed a lump in her throat as she stared at him warily.

                Meeting her gaze for another moment, he then turned and moved toward his bed. Reaching the edge, he lowered her to the surface, straightening as she settled carefully. He still hung loose out of his trousers though he was no longer erect and she found that she could barely pull her eyes away to look at his face.

                Wordlessly, he turned away from her, though he did tuck himself away. He left the room silently, moving like a wraith in the moonlight, and bringing her to sit up tentatively. Sounds came from the living room suite, the brush of clothes, the shifting of what seemed to be furniture. She reached out to him with her thoughts gingerly but he seemed to have locked himself away again, his walls up once more.

                Suddenly modest, she reached out for his sheets and yanked one close, wrapping it around her pelvis and attempting to tug it over her chest. It dragged as she pulled but she managed to wrangle it where she wanted it before he returned, his pale form drawing free of the shadows of the doorway leading to the living room. He held a glass of water in his hand and a long cylindrical object in his other, though he kept it pressed to his thigh and partly hidden.

                Rey frowned at the object as he neared, trying to understand what it was in the darkness.

                Instead, he came to a stop before her, holding the glass of water out.

                She took it from him carefully, aware that her hand trembled faintly as she took its weight into her palm.

                He merely watched her, his brow lifting slightly as he waited for her to drink.

                Turning her attention to it reluctantly, she suddenly realized how thirsty she was. She tilted the glass to her lips and took a deep swallow and then another, her eyes closing in relief at the cold fluid that trailed into her mouth. Lowering the glass away to the floor by her feet as she had her fill, she warily raised her eyes back to his other hand before meeting his gaze.

                Wordlessly, he hesitated only for a moment before lifting his hidden hand and holding the cylindrical object out to her.

                Luke’s lightsaber.

                Her heart came to a sudden stop as she recognized it, as she stared at it for a long, silent pause. It had been here with them the entire time?

                “It’s your choice,” he said to her quietly, his deep voice somehow somber.

                She stared at the saber hilt still before finally lifting her gaze back to his face. Reaching out, she took the lightsaber into her palm though her eyes didn’t leave his face. And as he released the lightsaber into her custody, she merely continued to look at him.

                Without a word, he turned from her, now empty-handed, and stooped to pick up his fallen clothes.

                Rey watched as he began to pull on his clothes, his tunic. “What…what are you doing?” she asked breathlessly. And then, when he didn’t stop, “Where are you _going_?” she asked him, noticing a moment later that her voice had come out high and slightly frantic.

                He didn’t respond, searching the floor for the next clothing item, and the gesture caused fear to spike through her, tension bringing her shoulders to stiffen.

                He was becoming _him_ again, becoming Kylo Ren and pushing Ben Solo away.

                “Stop. _Stop!”_ she cried out, her words ringing out fearfully and she didn’t even know what she was thinking but something inside of her needed him to stop, to just _stop_.

                He stilled and turned to look at her over his broad shoulder with a frown on his face as if she had surprised him.

                “Don’t-” she managed to make out before she grimaced, wanting to make him understand but uncertain as to how to go about it.

                He faced her, his brow pulled low though he merely waited for her.

                Shaking her head, her voice came low and tentative. “Don’t… _go_ ,” she stated quietly and she exhaled wearily, clutching Luke’s lightsaber in her lap and hunching over it tiredly. “Don’t go. Wherever it is that you’re going, don’t go. Just stay. Stay here.” And she lifted her eyes to him once more, drained. “Stay here with me,” she whispered.

                He merely stared at her for a long moment, his lips parted. Then, seeming to see the fatigue on her face, maybe even feeling it in their shared bond, he went to her swiftly.

                Rey recoiled at how quickly he moved but then he dropped to a knee before her and his arms darted out, his hands taking hold of her face and anchoring in her hair. “You can’t stay here,” he said to her softly, firmly.

                His words caused her to stiffen and she stared at him dumbly, feeling his fingers as they shifted along her neck, into her hair.

                “You can’t. I can’t keep you here anymore,” he said and he blinked rapidly, his dark eyes dropping to her mouth and then lower, his head falling as he spoke. “You have to run. I’m going to help you.”

                Rey couldn’t breathe for a long moment, her figure so stiff she felt she could break apart easily. He knelt before her, his hands still curled around her face and she could feel the warmth of them but she couldn’t make sense of his sentences, of his actions. Even as he spoke words that she had been aching to hear for weeks now, she couldn’t understand them. “I…I don’t-”

                “You made your choice,” he murmured, his words almost lost as he spoke them into the tight space between them. “And now you have to go. Not tonight. Stay tonight. But tomorrow you have to go.” He inhaled deeply, his chest expanding with the gesture. “Tomorrow I will find a way to facilitate your escape. Take the lightsaber and go.” And he nodded firmly, his head dropping low to his chest.

                She blinked at his words, her eyes searching the room numbly before dropping back down to his head of black waves. “Wha…no. No!” she stated firmly and her voice rang out loudly, echoing in the silence of the room.

                His head lifted, a frown furrowing his forehead as he met her eyes.

                “No,” she said again, softer this time, and she met his gaze, her own brow drawn. “I’m not leaving without you.”

                He stared at her for a long moment, seemingly at a loss for words. He shook his head momentarily, eyes blinking as if his thoughts were speeding too fast for him to keep up. “N-no,” he said quietly, hesitantly. “That’s…no. That’s not how this can work,” he uttered, and his fingers curled in, clutching her head in a tightening grasp. “You have to run tomorrow and-”

                She stared at his lowered face, tilting her head slightly to search his eyes out.

                “And I can’t go with you. I won’t…” He shook his head once more, eyes sliding shut tightly. “We will only have the one chance and you can’t do it alone. I will…I can hold them off. I will buy you the time to escape.”

                She blinked at him, her lips parting at his words.

                He exhaled deeply, fingers unconsciously caressing her cheek, tangling in her hair as he nodded. “Early morning or late in the night. The guard will be smaller, less troopers making the rounds. I will reprogram the consoles, bypass security to allow you through. You will take a ship and go-”

                “Stop,” she uttered and she closed her eyes, shaking her head roughly as if attempting to rid her ears of water. “Stop talking. Stop saying what you’re saying-”

                “They can’t know that I will be helping you. The Supreme Leader will read it from me given enough time but Hux-” He shook his head with a grimace, still planning. “Hux will know-”

                _“Stop talking!”_ She shouted at him, effectively bringing him to a stop. As he recoiled and met her eyes once more, she dropped the lightsaber to his bed surface and streaked forward, clutching his face now as well. “You’re not buying me time. You’re buying _us_ time. We’re leaving together. I am not leaving without you-”

                “I can’t leave here,” he said to her quietly, already shaking his head.

                “You can,” she responded, speaking over him, nodding. “You can. We can go together-”

                “I can’t leave here,” he snapped at her, anger beginning to rise on his face as she dismissed his words. “I can’t leave the First Order-”

                Feeling his irritation and unwilling to push it down for him, she allowed it to rise within herself as well. “You _won’t_ leave the First Order,” she tossed right back. “Always _can’t_ , and _won’t_.” Angrily, she clutched him even tighter, forcing him to listen. “You can run with me, leave this place and go back to the Resistance. _Come_ with me-”

                “I won’t leave the First Order,” he said to her heatedly. “This is my home. This has always been my home-”

                _“Your home is with me!”_ she shouted furiously.

                Ben sat back on his haunches at her words, stunned, as her cry echoed in the stillness and then died away into silence.

                Shaking with anger, Rey ripped her head from his hands, pushing him away so that she could shoot to her feet, the force of her shove almost knocking him off his knee. Even half nude, she was too mad to care. She brushed past him and stopped, her frame trembling as she looked back out his windows, at the dark wood and the brilliant moonlight streaming in.

                Her legs still quivered finely.

                She looked down at him over her shoulder. He had not moved from his kneel though now his hands rested on his thighs, his stare distant toward the back of the bedroom; staring off into the past as she stared at the future ahead, darkness and moonlight.

                Why couldn’t they ever just get anything _right?_

                “This is not your home,” she said to him bitterly, her voice shaking, and she motioned with a wide sweep of her hand. “This place, these people…” She felt her anger shimmer throughout her body, felt something rise inside that had been nearly quelled in defeat for the last few weeks.

                Rebellion. Resistance.

                “You were born to a dynasty of Force Users. You are the son of the General for the Resistance,” she whispered down to him in a voice quaking with fury. “You are the last of the Skywalker line and I am not going to let you keep _doing_ this-”

                He shot to his feet at her words, his rage suddenly rising from his body and in the bond they shared, rising like the waves at high tide, the surfs in a tsunami.

                She continued to forget how tall he was, how small he made her feel. She was sure he used his height and breadth to his advantage even when he was unaware he did it, like now. Even barely dressed, muscle pulling tight under the thin layer of clothing, he was no less intimidating. And she remembered this person from her dreams, this shadow of a man with his anger and wrath, his darkness constantly threatening to overpower her even as he had craved her.

                “You do not _control_ me,” he snarled at her, his face so close that she felt his heat, his breath on her cheek. “You do not speak for me and you do not dictate my actions or my desires.” He threw out a hand as well, pointing toward the doorway even as she knew he spoke of the base they currently resided in, this planet they operated within. “This is my home! This is my _choice_!” he stated, lips tight as he spoke, teeth glinting in the light. “You have made yours and now allow me to make mine.”

                Rey stared up at him, her own mouth narrowing into a hard line as his words hit her like stones.

                “Tomorrow, you leave,” he said to her, his voice dropping to a low growl. “I will facilitate it and you will go home.”

                “And if I don’t go?” she asked him softly then, her gentle tone cutting his words down. “What will you do if I don’t go?”

                He cocked his head slightly as he stared at her, his jaw clenching hard enough to cause her to grimace inwardly.

                But she was not intimidated by him. Not now that she knew what he felt, what he would be willing to sacrifice for her, what he had _already_ sacrificed. “What will you do, Ben?” she asked again in the lightest breath, her brow furrowing sadly.

                His breath came from him in exasperation at the use of his birth name at such a moment, as if she hadn’t driven his name into him for so many weeks now. As if he hadn’t already accepted it. “You made your choice, Rey,” he said to her tersely, his own brow lifting as he reminded her. “You-”

                “I didn’t know the choice meant leaving you behind,” she said to him softly. “I didn’t know.”

                His dark eyes stared into her light ones, his lips parting at her words. They dropped to her mouth for a long breath and she read the desire, the _yearning_ , on his face.

                And it wasn’t for her body in that moment.

                She stepped into him, bringing her lips within inches of his, her forehead pressing into his as she pulled him down to her with a yank to his hair. “Tomorrow, I’ll go,” she whispered, her mouth brushing his, her other hand lifting to his chest and sliding up the hard plane slowly.

                He grimaced against her even as his eyes slid shut in desperation.

                “But I’m not going without you,” she murmured, her fingers soothing him as he stiffened under her touch, under her words. “So tomorrow? You keep that in mind when you plan our escape.” And she rose on tiptoe, her hand sliding up his chest to his neck and then grasping his face, bringing him down to meet her lips.

                He held himself rigid for a small moment before he exhaled a soft groan into her mouth, his strong hands winding around her waist to slip up her back and drag her to his chest tightly.

                And as he returned her kiss, immediately deepening it and reaching for her bare skin, she hoped he had heard her words. Because if not, there was a good chance that she would never leave this place again.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Thirty-Five: **

The next morning found her jittery and she was sure he felt it through their bond which did not help their situation. She rose from the bed as he stirred and she looked out toward the windows, over the trees and toward the sun.

She was leaving today. They both were.

 

 


	36. Chapter Thirty-Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS. We're SO CLOSE to the END! OMG! I'm freaking ooooooooooooooooooooooout!
> 
> Also, if you guys are on tumblr and followed me, please let me know who you are so I can follow back if I don't already! I get so confused!!
> 
> Here's the next chapter and JUST SO YOU GUYS KNOW, this one ends in a cliffhanger so be prepared! Enjoy!!

Chapter Thirty-Five:

 

                The next morning found her jittery and she was sure he felt it through their bond which did not help their situation. She rose from the bed as he stirred and she looked out toward the windows, over the trees and toward the sun.

                She was leaving today. They both were.

                They had stayed up well into the late hours of the night after they had quelled their desire for each other once more. Such things seemed so much easier in the dark, in the night when everyone slept and nothing was awake except the moon. But as she had pressed her body into his, their arms clutching at each other tensely, their conversation had turned to her escape and, in essence, his as well. He’d continued to deflect her questions, had turned away her words or ignored them when she had relayed the things she had noticed her entire time living on the First Order base; the weaknesses she had seen, the routes she would take if just given the smallest bit of help.

                He had knocked down all of her suggestions, listing ways that she would have been apprehended almost tonelessly. As if he didn’t want to know.

                But as the night had gone on with their silence hanging overhead, his chest had risen under her hand in a deep breath and he had nodded. He knew where the Resistance currently resided even though they had been forced to run at a moment’s notice weeks before. His contacts had come through and he bowed his head along her forehead, exhaling into her hair. In the morning he would send the call for the Resistance and hand over the First Order’s base, asking for the Resistance to come for Rey.

                “And I will help them when they come for you,” he had murmured. “I can’t leave this base with you anymore, for any reason. Hux will see to it that you remain trapped here. He will know that I am helping you escape if I attempt.” He shook his head, his chin dragging across her hair. “He is already putting safeguards in place after my gathering with the Supreme Leader. Tomorrow, you are to be executed.”

                She had stilled in his arms at his words, had blinked against his chest. “That’s why you were so mad earlier,” she had whispered. “When you returned to your quarters tonight.”

                He had nodded along her head. “Yes.”

                Now, with the sun slanting through the windows, she felt her brow draw low, her eyes narrowing.

                Today would not mark the end of their story.

                And as he also came awake beside her, as he sat up on the other side of his bed and turned his head to look at her over his shoulder, she suddenly realized that he was fully on board. As he merely looked at her, she felt it in their connection and saw it in his eyes.

                He was coming with her. And as she gazed at him, she felt her lips curl into a smile and she reached for him, feeling him surrender to her kiss in the sunlight.

 

                She had been in his quarters for hours as he had gone to alert the Resistance covertly, as he had made his rounds and made his appearances as if to ensure that there was nothing wrong, nothing amiss. She had spent the entire time clutching her hands together, wringing them, standing and pacing toward the windows of his bedrooms and then turning back to the darkness of his living room, casting glances at the refresher.

                She didn’t know how to help him at all.

                After all of this time, she had never expected that she would leave this place alive in the end, that he would facilitate her escape.

                That she would leave _with_ him.

                She felt her heart pound as she doubted herself yet again, as she walked between his bedroom and his living room, as she came close to panic. What if he changed his mind in these moments between leaving her and returning to her? What if he returned with a group of stormtroopers, with the general and the captain flanking him, and handed her over to them? What if everything he had ever done for her and everything she had thought he had felt for her had been a lie?

                What would she do?

                No. No, she stated to herself and she shook her head as if to convince herself. No. These last few weeks, these precious moments, he would not abandon her the way she feared. He felt for her the way she had come to feel for him. He would return for her and he would run with her.

                He would run with her.

 

                When he did return to his living quarters, he was silent for the longest moment. And as the doors slid closed behind his form, he immediately ripped the helmet from his head and crossed the room to her anxious form, his face stern.

                “We have three hours. They will be here by then. And we can’t stay here when they come,” he said to her urgently, his brow drawing low. “This base has enough defenses and enough weaponry to handle squadrons. Sensors will pick up their hyperdrives, and interdiction fields will pull them out of hyperspace travel once they enter our airspace. I will attempt to disarm the sensors to give them the edge but I can’t guarantee it will work. We will have the element of surprise but we have to start making our way to them if we’re to escape alive.”

                She nodded automatically at his words and then her face promptly crumbled.

                He frowned at her in alarm but dragged her into his embrace. “Rey.”

                “I didn’t know if you were coming back, if you still wanted to help me leave,” she tried to explain, though her words came from her broken and weary. “I didn’t know-”

                He nodded against her temple, his arms tight around her. “I’m here and I’m going to help you. It’ll all work out-”

                “You’re still coming with me?” she asked and she dragged herself back from him to meet his eyes. “You haven’t changed your mind? You _can’t_ change your mind-”

                “I’m coming with you,” he stated firmly and he ducked his head to gaze at her straight on. “I’m coming with you.”

                And she could only nod as he pulled her back into his chest and wrapped his arms around her.

 

                The countdown for those three hours was almost fatal. He had left again for the majority of the time, leaving her to her own devices. She had gone to his bedroom and looked out over the woods, at the strip of hangar bay below to her left, watching it with crossed arms and then turning her head to the blue sky overheard.

                The Resistance was coming for her. Now that they knew the location of the First Order base, they were finally coming for her and she found herself searching the sky for them.

                Within the hour, Ben had returned. “Come with me now, Rey,” he said to her quietly as he paused within his quarters, lowering his helmet at his side.

                Turning to look at him from his bedroom, she nodded before going to his bed, ducking low, and reaching for the injector gun and sedative tubes she had hidden beneath. Pocketing the items, she glanced at him but he merely waited.

                Perhaps he had known all along that she had stashed those items under his bed.

                Turning to his nightstand, she took up Luke’s lightsaber and slipped it into the harness at her hip. “Okay,” she murmured, crossing the bedroom and then the living room to his tall form. “I’m ready.”

                Gazing at her, he nodded momentarily before taking hold of her and yanking her to him, kissing her urgently.

                She returned his kiss, her heart pounding in her chest, her pulse roaring in her ears.

                This person. This person here. He would be all she would ever need, she realized as he released her mouth, as he bowed his forehead into hers and breathed her in.

                And then it was time to go.

 

                The second they left the quarters together, she sensed something amiss. Too much silence in the corridors, no stormtroopers making rounds the way she had caught glimpses of them doing before when she’d been forced to cross these halls with the knight. She turned her head to look over her shoulder as he led her and frowned, slowly turning back to face forward.

                “I feel it, too,” he murmured from under his helmet, his tone low and mechanical.

                “Something’s wrong,” she stated quietly but she ducked her head and followed nonetheless as he spirited her to a lift.

                Once inside the lift, he turned his masked face to the side, Rey hovering behind him. She sensed the distance in him for a long moment and she frowned faintly as she stared at his metal profile, light eyes trailing over the chrome curves and black lines. “Ben.”

                He was silent for a moment, his frame rigid. “I’m trying…to find them,” he said, his tone coming out from beneath the mask low and dangerous. “I can recognize signatures, mental voices. I can’t…hear anyone from the control deck.”

                And just like that his hand streaked out and waved across the console quickly.

                Rey followed his gestures, staggered as the lift came to an abrupt halt.

                “They know,” was all he said and even as the doors were opening onto an unfamiliar floor, he was pulling forth his wild lightsaber, igniting it at his side.

                Rey recoiled at the gesture and then looked at him, ice shooting through her. “They know?”

                “Rey, come!” he ordered her briskly and he moved through the open door onto the floor, his helmeted head turning both ways to search the corridor he had come out on.

                Rey immediately did as ordered, her hand lifting to Luke’s lightsaber at her hip as she came out onto the level behind him, and then followed his storming form as he took the hallway directly ahead. Looking around, uncertain as to what she was looking for, she only grimaced as he waved his free hand around the corridors, swallowing up the distance in long strides.

                Surveillance units in the corners of the hallways burst, exploding as he waved his hand at them, as he moved on intently.

                Blinking, all Rey could think then was that she was thankful he was on her side for this escape. All of her Plan Bs and Cs would not have accounted for being trapped in a lift or out in the open in these hallways. Her previous escape attempt had earned her Phasma’s chrome fist to the face, and she would gladly avoid a repeat of that if she could.

              Reaching the end of the corridor, Ren smashed the remaining cameras and looked toward the two lifts greeting him. “We have to take a lift,” he stated and he pointed at one with his lightsaber while waving his hand at the other. “They won’t know which one, which means they will split their guard. Less of them will make it easier for us. The Resistance is not yet here.”

                Rey flinched as a busted security camera sparked. “How do you know?” she demanded.

                He curled his head toward her, pausing. “I don’t sense the General,” he replied quietly, his tone low and soft from under the mask.

                Rey blinked at his response, surprised that Leia would be the one that he would search for and somehow not surprised at all. And then she questioned whether the rescue team would even include the general, whether it would be willing to sacrifice such a piece on that Dejarik board. She opened her mouth to question him, to explain that there was a good chance the general would not be part of the assault if the Resistance even came for her, but then one of the lifts arrived.

                Stepping closer, the knight curled his hand into a fist and the surveillance device and lights exploded within the cell, plunging the lift into darkness except for the glow of the console. “Hold that one,” he ordered her and he turned to look at the other lift expectantly.

                Darting forth, Rey stepped to hover in the doorway to the lift and waited, looking toward him and glancing at the hallway as sparks fizzed in the corridor, throwing lights from deep within. Lifting her hand back to her hip, she released Luke’s lightsaber into her grip and lowered it at her side, activating it, the blade lighting her up in blue.

                Ben looked over for a quick moment then turned his head back in anticipation of the lift. “That still belongs to me,” he tossed out at her, though his tone was light even from behind the mask.

                Rey smiled in the sudden gloom of their situation. “It still likes me more,” she threw back and she appreciated the mental chuckle he gave.

                The second lift arrived a moment later and the knight did the same with it, destroying the lights and surveillance cameras inside of it. Streaking to it, he dipped his head in from the doorway and searched the console, his hand moving along its face before he pulled back and moved to join her at her lift.

                “Be prepared,” he said to her, shoving her in ahead of him and waving a hand at the console.

                She didn’t need to ask him for what as the doors closed behind them, secluding them in purple darkness from their weapons as the lift began to move.

                “I’m stopping the lift on the upper levels over the landing strips. We have secondary hangar bays that overlook the main hangar bays and they are open. Phasma will divide their force between the two lifts now, as both are traveling down. One will stop at the top hangar bay and the other at the main. We will face a good amount of them on the way out,” he said to her firmly, his tone level though deep. Attempting to read the situation and, quite possibly, the troopers waiting for them.

                As the lift traveled, Rey lifted her head as she heard the hiss of his helmet releasing, and then the hard thump as he hauled it off his head and dropped it to the floor.

                “Ben,” she said, attempting a strong tone and failing somewhat as she recognized the face that she had come to love.

                His hand found hers in the eerie darkness, his face pinched in the wavering red glow. “It will be fine. I will get you to them,” he stated, his fingers entwining with hers and squeezing tightly.

                “You’re coming with me,” she said to him brusquely and she earned a snort from him, his head turning away from hers.

                “We’ll see.”

                And he said it in a way that Rey understood immediately that the only way he wouldn’t join her was if he were dead. As she went to bite out an angry response, the lift came to a halt and he squeezed her hand once more before releasing it.  

                The doors slid open and an empty corridor awaited them.

                Rey almost flinched at not finding a threat waiting for them, Kylo Ren’s form just as rigid ahead of her.

                Taking a step, the knight came to the doorway and waved his hand, dragging it into a fist and clenching it.

                The brilliant lights in the corridor simultaneously burst, fizzing and exploding, sparks flying and bouncing across the sterile floors silently.

                “Now they know,” he stated and he stormed out, his blazing weapon at his side as he moved down the corridor.

                Rey scampered out behind him, searching the hallway wildly as she fell into step.

                “The top hangar bay is ahead,” the knight said to her, striding purposefully. “Four consoles, four hallways, and they open out into the loading docks-”

                Just as he reached the end of the corridor, a dark blur of a figure came from the adjoining hallway, causing Kylo Ren to recoil and draw back instinctively.

                Rey felt a cry leave her lips as the two black-garbed figures clashed and locked in battle, their forms lurching to the left and along the wall. She recognized the second figure a moment later as he drew back and then lunged at Kylo Ren again, swinging a large metal blade.

                One of his Knights of Ren.

                Almost effortlessly, Kylo Ren swung his own weapon, the red flashing across the walls. His blade easily severed the silver weapon held in the knight’s grip and the wielder immediately darted aside, avoiding an ensuing saber swing. Following the first attack, Kylo Ren spun and swiped again, his red blade arcing once more.

               The strike lashed up across the knight’s torso, flinging him backward. His black figure stumbled and crashed to the floor with flailing limbs, his helmeted head knocking into the floor loudly, the sound reverberating.

                Kylo Ren swung his lightsaber back down at his side, seemingly anticipating the knight on the floor to rise once more. But as they waited, the knight merely settled limply, his uniform smoking in the silence.

                “They’ve turned my knights,” Kylo Ren murmured, seething.

                _They didn’t_ , Rey thought in that moment, her eyes darting from him to the knight and back again. _We did. **I** did_.

                Kylo Ren looked at her sharply, his brow drawing low. But instead of responding to what had been her mental words, he instead spun back around and stormed on, his weapon flaring brilliantly.

                Shaking her head, Rey followed silently.

                They took the adjoining hallway with the knight leading, stalking. Even now as they moved to escape, he did not run and she remembered how he had advanced on her and chased her this very same way; walking calmly, following, _prowling_. He moved with the same storm to his step, free hand clenched into a fist at his side as he led her down the corridor.

                Waving his hand, he continued on as the door ahead flew open to admit him.

                One door down.

                “Where are they, Ben?” she called to him as he moved ahead of her.

                He shook his head as he strode forth starkly. “I don’t know,” he replied.

                They crossed the wide expanse of hallway, one bisected by another corridor. As he neared, he slowed and then peered around the corners. Seeming to see nothing, he moved to take a step and immediately faltered as a blue beam shot out from the corridor to his right. The beam struck him along his side, sparks flying, and he was shoved aside, his heavy form listing.

                _“Ben!”_

                Flying forward, Rey tossed herself into the intersection of the hallways before immediately recoiling as more beams flew.

                Kylo Ren staggered ahead, slipping out of the intersection into the corridor ahead to shield himself away, the hand wielding the lightsaber lifting to press to his side gingerly, his other hand reaching for the wall to steady himself.

                Rey waited on the opposite side, pressing herself to the wall.

                He was bleeding. He hunched over, his hand pressing into his ribs and Rey suddenly had a flashback to that terrible day on StarKiller when he had taken the bowcaster hit to his torso. By the Force, was it the same side? She dug her fingers into the wall as she dragged her eyes over him. No, not the same side but she dropped her eyes to the floor, seeing the same night in the snowy woods as his blood fell. Only this time his blood dripped to the sterile floor of this First Order base and she couldn’t bear it anymore.

                Ducking her head, she tossed herself across the intersection of hallways, flinching as blaster beams flew behind her darting form.

                Stopping just within the adjoining corridor, she streaked to Ben’s side, immediately shifting his weapon hand enough to duck underneath it to prop him up. “Ben! Ben-”

                He didn’t seem hurt so much as angry with himself. “I didn’t see it. I didn’t feel it,” he grunted with a hiss of pain and his eyes closed in a wince as she straightened up, forcing him up as well, their lightsabers hovering close to each other with their gestures. “I didn’t know-”

                A second later he became rigid and then moved fluidly. He dragged his hand from the wall and bent to wind it around her waist, taking hold of her and yanking her forward. She staggered as he unwound himself from her, swinging his weapon hand widely behind his tall form.

                Turning, Rey caught sight of another black armored figure in the cross section of the hallways and she ducked away as the Knight of Ren swung a staff down between them, easily separating her from Ben.

                Kylo Ren stumbled back against the wall, his pale face pinched. But as the attacker recoiled from his attack, Ren pushed off the wall and spun, his flaring weapon slicing upward angrily.

                The knight avoided the attack, sidling back into the intersection to recoup.

                Rey bounced off her side of the corridor, Luke’s lightsaber flaring as she sliced it horizontally at the knight. He barely dodged her strike but as he came back at her, she had already pulled a knee in tight to her chest, tossing it outward as Kylo Ren spun.

                Her foot caught the knight in his chest and shoved him backward, effectively throwing him into her partner’s range. And as the knight lurched and advanced once more, Kylo Ren stabbed his blade upward, pushing from his torso.

                The knight ran directly into the lightsaber, halted in mid-attack.

                Rey felt her jaw drop at the vision of the knight impaled upon Kylo Ren’s lightsaber, at the thought that she would never be able to unsee such an image.

                The knight let out a slight gurgle, suspended over Kylo Ren’s blade, thrust clear through to the crossguard. He hunched over the flaring blade, his armor lit from the glow and for a moment he merely lifted his helmeted head toward Kylo Ren.

                “Master,” he whispered throatily before his body began to fall.

                Kylo Ren drew his weapon out of the knight’s form violently and backed away as his form toppled to the floor.

                In the ensuing silence, Rey looked toward him, hazel eyes wide.

                Ben returned the glance briefly before turning his head to look toward the door at the end of the corridor. “Two more,” he murmured and for a moment he hesitated, his face falling blank as he gazed at the door ahead.

                Rey stared at him, her heart in her throat.

                But as he turned his head toward her, his expression seemed to lighten. “They’re here,” he whispered, his voice airy and calmed. “ _She’s_ here. For you.”

                Rey blinked, her chest heaving. “The Resistance? The General?” she questioned desperately.

                He nodded wordlessly though a smile curled his lips slightly.

                A second later there was a distant explosion and the floor beneath her feet seemed to tremble. She reached out with her hand reflexively, latching onto him as she dropped her eyes to the floor and then lifted them to him, her frown clearing away. She knew that sound and she knew the noise that accompanied it, the shriek of an alarm rising suddenly throughout the base.

                This time the siren was welcome as were the distant but glorious sounds of X-wings entering the fray further ahead and outside.

                “She’s here for _us_!” Rey burst out, understanding, and she suddenly darted into him, taking hold of him once more even as he let out a hard groan at her manhandling of him. “Come on! We have to go to them!”

                Letting out a grunt, he nonetheless allowed her to wind up under his arm again. Glancing over her shoulder quickly, she made the decision then to holster Luke’s lightsaber, turning her attention to getting him to move. And then she was dragging his heavy form to the far door and the console, nudging him to open it as they reached it.

                With a wince, he waved his hand and she suddenly felt his pulse beneath her fingers as she cradled his arm over her shoulder, his wrist under her hand. She felt in that moment that it wanted to race, that it ached to, but as they slipped through the second doorway she felt it plummet.

                From one step to the next it suddenly fell, as did he.

                As the door slid closed behind them, he staggered backward, dragging her before she realized she couldn’t hold him by herself. She turned as he fell, easing him down to the floor with shaking muscles. “Ben!”

                Grimacing, he collapsed against the wall and then slid down its surface, falling into a heap beneath the door console and dragging a hand to his wounded side. His other hand extinguished the red lightsaber and then fell limply at his side as he exhaled wearily.

                “Ben! Ben. Come on. We’re so close. We’re so _close-_ ”

                He winced, teeth clenching together. Blood seeped from his side, darkening his black uniform in a large stain. And as she kneeled beside him, as she untied her sash to bandage him, she caught a glimpse of the blood that dripped from his uniform to the cold metal floor beneath his straining form.

                Despairing, she shook her head and rolled the sash up in her hands, pressing it to his side and applying pressure. “Just stop moving,” she ordered him stiffly, her voice thick with fear. “Just stop-”

                He flinched with tight lips as she bandaged him, head falling back slightly, his eyes shifting toward the closed doors at his side. “They’re coming,” he hissed and his mouth shut as he pushed out a strained exhale. With a shake of his head, he said, “There are two sets of doors before the hangar bay, this one and the last one. They’ll be waiting for you. They’re breaking into the last door even now. Go.”

                Rey lifted her eyes from the cloth she had pressed to his side. “You’re going to bleed out at this rate if I leave you,” she said to him flatly, her voice steadier than she felt. “Stop moving so much-”

                “You are running out of time,” he cut her off and he returned his gaze to her, his face paler than it had been a moment ago. “Go-”

                “And stop talking,” she ordered him. Her hand was trembling even as she readjusted her fingers to hold the sash to his side. “I couldn’t get you to even speak to me in the beginning and now I can’t get you to _shut up-_ ”

                His hand darted off the floor at his side and caught her by the side of her face, arching her jaw up with a hard grip. Rey blinked at him in surprise, her words falling away as she met his dark eyes, as his glare softened. His thumb brushed across her cheekbone lightly, leather across skin, and when he leaned forward to kiss her, Rey automatically closed her eyes.

                The kiss was brief, the meeting of lips only, but it was the look on his face that frightened Rey when he pulled away from her.

                “Forgive me,” he said to her softly. “For everything. But especially for this.”

                She frowned slightly at his words, her lips parting to question him. But he lifted his head away, eyes shifting to the door that led to the hangar bay. Grimacing, he stretched a hand out, fingers clawing.

                The door slid open with a hiss.

                Rey spun on her haunches, looking to the door quickly only to find the corridor empty on the other side. She turned back to him in confusion.

                And then she felt herself lift as if someone had taken hold of her under her arms. She started, immediately flailing, her hand dropping the bunched up bloodied sash as she was hauled backward. There was no one behind her but a moment later it didn’t matter as she was sent hurtling across the room, sliding along the floor with no traction, no way to stop herself. She was yanked clear through the doorway into the hallway, coming to a squeaking stop just within. Heart pounding in panic, Rey lifted her head to look over her shoulder frantically as she pushed herself to her hands and knees. There was no one in the corridor with her and she whirled, realizing that Ben was still moving, gesturing.

                His hand shifted from her to the doorway console, his face pinched.

                “No! _No-”_ she shouted to him warningly, understanding then. She rose to her feet and raced to the doorway as he made a circling motion with his hand.

                The door slid shut with a hiss of air and Rey collided with it directly, bouncing off and staggering in disorientation before flinging herself back at it.

                “No, Ben, _no_!”

                Slamming her hands down on the door, she looked through the small transparisteel windows, watching as he clenched his hand into a fist roughly.

                The console at her side flickered and then exploded, causing her to flinch away as it sent small sparks fizzing and flying. Fear rose past the panic as she stared at it blindly for a moment, as she streaked back to the windows, her palms slapping down on the door again roughly, loudly. _“Ben!”_

                He settled wearily, his hand falling to the floor at his side limply, his chest rising and falling as he breathed shallowly.

                Rey felt her heart tear as she dropped her eyes to his side, as she watched the slowly widening pool and the sash she had used to staunch his wound cast aside on the floor beside him and staining as it absorbed his blood loss. The copper fluid fell to the sterile surface silently, dripping into the sash now as well, and she was reminded of the night she had fought him on StarKiller base; the blow that he had taken from the bowcaster, how he had struck the wound to fuel his anger in their confrontation, how he had drawn from darkness.

                How he was no _longer_ such darkness.

                “Ben, please!” she shouted from behind the locked door, tears beginning to rise in her eyes. “Please! Open the door! Just open the door-”

                He lifted his gaze to her, his face blank of expression even at seeing her terror. He seemed to sigh as he merely looked at her, almost as if in resignation. Then he shifted, pushing himself to sit up away from the wall slowly.

                She watched, half praying, half begging that he would do as she had asked, that he would run with her.

                He stopped as he managed to sit up, breathing heavily in fatigue. Then he pushed again, straining, this time attempting to rise to his feet.

                _They’re coming_ , she shouted to him in her head, hoping to scream in his head as well.

                If he heard, he gave no indication. He stood up weakly, wobbling on unsteady legs, lifting his lightsaber hand to his wound slowly. And just as Rey thought he was moving to press the metal hilt to his side and clutch it with his hand, he instead activated the weapon, the red blade streaking out, red flame shooting from the lateral vents of the crossguard a moment later.

                “Ben,” Rey whispered haltingly, fearful. “Ben-”

                Turning slowly, he gave her his back, head lifting to the other door just as that console sparked as well. The door opened silently at the end of the corridor and stormtroopers moved to enter before coming to a halt as they were confronted with the Master of the Knights of Ren.

                And then Kylo Ren raised his lightsaber, the red fiery beam flaring brilliantly in the corridor as he faced the guard, as Rey screamed his name behind the sealed door.

 

** Next Chapter – Chapter Thirty-Six: **

Rey turned her head down to the dim console beside her and stared at it silently. He had done this to her, had chosen this way to stop her from returning for him because he knew she had never been able to master the task. And now he stood separated from her by his own decision, giving her the opportunity to run, to escape because he knew that she wouldn’t be able to do anything except run or watch him falter. He was assuming she would do either one or the other.

He was mistaken, as usual, and she was sick and tired of proving him wrong.

 

 


	37. Chapter Thirty-Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *breathes in deeply* *exhales slowly* 
> 
> Guys. We can do this. WE CAN DO THIS! One more chapter after this, WE CAN DO THIS!!
> 
> Thank you all for the comments, the kudos, the laughs and the love!! I hope you guys enjoy this chapter!! 
> 
> *throws back eight shots frantically while listening to the three playlists* *cries at each and every song* *sings some Boyz II Men while drunk* It's so haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard...to say goodbyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye....to yesterdaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay-eeeeeeeeeeeeeee...." 
> 
> Imagine how I'm going to be when I post the epilogue if I'm this emotional for the second to last chapter, lol!

Chapter Thirty-Six:

 

                He was fearful to watch, Rey realized somewhere in the back of her head numbly, her trembling hands pressed to the door. She was accustomed to his height, to his darkness; to the shift of his moods and the pure animal strength he held in his body. But watching from the doorway, unable to tear her eyes away even as she wept silently, she couldn’t help but realize yet again that this was not only Ben Solo standing between her and the First Order. This was also Kylo Ren, draped in tattered blackness and wielding a brilliant weapon. Kylo Ren, the Black Knight of the First Order, the Supreme Leader’s beloved apprentice. Even without a helmet, he was still the wraith that wandered the base’s corridors, their enforcer that could bring swift death.

                He didn’t even need the weapon, she thought blankly. As the first stormtroopers entered, he merely threw a hand out as if pushing against something invisible and the entire group in front was tossed back, pushed off their feet and sent flying into other white-armored guards behind them. They toppled like pins and Kylo Ren returned to his starting position to wait, his shoulders hunching slightly.

                No. She was not going to watch this happen.

                Rey turned her head down to the dim console beside her and stared at it silently. He had done this to her, had chosen this way to stop her from returning for him because he knew she had never been able to master the task. And now he stood separated from her by his own decision, giving her the opportunity to run, to escape because he knew that she wouldn’t be able to do anything except run or watch him falter. He was assuming she would do either one or the other.

                He was mistaken, as usual, and she was sick and tired of proving him wrong.

                Brushing away the tears with a rough gesture, she returned her attention to the console, glaring at the unlit device. Quelling her anger, she took a deep, shaky breath. Her senses expanded slowly and she opened herself up to the hum that she had realized long ago had always been around her, within her. Such a soft hum that in complete silence would begin to sound like hushed voices and whispers, like nature. The tender splash of water on a shore, the breath of winds through a forest. The gentle rumble of thunder as light flashed behind her closed eyes, and the pounding of her blood in her veins.

                The heat of his touch and the caress of his lips.

                _“There are two ways to do it; the easy way or the hard way. I always choose the hard way.”_

                She hadn’t been able to do it the hard way because it had called for her to extend herself more than she was used to in the terms of brute strength. That was his method but it couldn’t be hers. She needed a softer touch with this, the easy way then; though she knew it wouldn’t necessarily feel as such.

_“If you’re going to do it the other way, you need to focus on the circuitry. I have severed it which means you need to become the conduit between circuits. Spark the electricity again to jar the mechanism to work.”_

_“Because it’s just that easy.”_

                And now his life depended on her being able to do one of the things she hadn’t been able to master. She risked a quick glance up through the windows to see that stormtroopers had finally managed to enter the room. He motioned with his free hand, sending a couple of them flying against the side of the corridor and hunching as a beam from a blaster struck the door she was trapped behind. She flinched and quickly looked back down at the console, her shoulders heaving in panic.

                _“Breathe. Just breathe.”_

                “Just breathe,” she whispered and she inhaled deeply once more, her eyes closing momentarily to calm herself, to distract herself from the fact that if she couldn’t do it and quickly, she would be running alone. She opened her eyes as she felt her heart slow, as the breath cleared the thoughts away. Then she dropped her stare to the console and felt the world fall away into stillness, sound muffled all around her.

                _Spark the electricity. Spark the electricity._

                There was a flash of red, the swinging of a wild lightsaber to deflect blaster fire, but Rey was slowly falling numb and blank, her tremors lessening and becoming nothing, her hearing becoming thick as if she had submerged herself under water.

                _Spark the electricity. Spark the electricity._

                But the more she heard his voice say the words, speak the sentence and replay the events of that day, she realized that he had been wrong. She couldn’t spark the electricity. She couldn’t spark-

                The door at the end of the corridor behind her suddenly slid open, somehow sounding so far away. She lifted a sightless gaze to it over her shoulder, barely recognizing Poe as he appeared in the other doorway with Finn at his side and Resistance members flanking them.

                _“Rey!”_ Finn shouted and he immediately took off racing down the hallway toward her.

                “I can’t spark it,” she whispered to him, not registering the flash of confusion that twisted his painfully familiar face as he reached her. “I can’t spark it. I have to _become_ it.”

                Ignoring his words as he spluttered, she turned around in time to see Kylo Ren hesitate within the other corridor, to feel his sudden terror rise in the air surrounding her, the cold shiver of his presence in her head. He turned his head slightly as if hearing something over his shoulder; a whisper, a breath.

                Her realization, she understood only later; his fear that she would be able to rejoin the fight and conceivably go down with him, specifically because he did not expect to survive the fight.

                A moment later he took a blaster shot to the chest, just off the right shoulder. He was spun around, his body dropping to his knees roughly as the stormtroopers recovered.

                He had been hit exactly where Rey herself had carved into him with Luke’s lightsaber.

                But Rey was lost by then. The world was non-existent around her, all sound dwindling to nothing but a murmur running under the whisper of the Force racing through her veins like blood. She blinked blankly as she looked at Finn once more, at Poe as he slid to a stop beside the former stormtrooper.

                “What the-” Poe uttered as he looked in through the window to the other corridor.

                “You have to help him,” Rey whispered as she turned back to the damaged console.

                “Help him?” Finn demanded and he also looked through the window as the Knight of Ren pushed himself back to his feet and whirled back around with a wide sweep of his arm. Stormtroopers were hurled once more but as he turned to face the assault, he staggered sideways, faltering. “Leave him there! Let’s go!” Finn shouted, and when she didn’t acknowledge him, he took hold of her arm. “Rey!”

                “Help him,” she said again monotonously, blankly. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

                The door slid open once more behind the stormtroopers in the corridor with Kylo Ren, and the other stormtroopers huddling in the hallway slowed and parted to allow their chrome-armored Captain and the red-haired General through, the remaining Knights of Ren bringing up the rear.

                Turning her blind attention to the console, Rey concentrated, falling into the whispers around her, into the cool caress of the Force deep inside as it suddenly swelled in a wave and surrounded her. She saw the broken circuits in the darkness of her mind, followed their lengths and found where they fell away into blackness, where the bridge had been severed.

                _Become it._

                Phasma lifted a blaster rifle as she came to stand before the knight, Hux brandishing a weapon as well.

                The circuits sparked in her head as she prodded at them, as she seemed to reach across the vastness between their frayed edges. Even as Finn shook her again, as Poe attempted to pull him back, she ignited them as she had kindled flames to life in Ben’s bed what seemed like such a long time ago, even though it had only been mere weeks. She reached between them with her thoughts, with her very self, and she felt the console begin to respond, to flicker with light. She lifted a hand to Luke’s lightsaber at her side numbly, blindly wrapping her fingers around the hilt and readying herself, allowing herself to recall the feel of its weight once more.

                “Help him,” she said to Poe and Finn again.

                A second later she bridged the gap in circuits, energy thrumming through the console powerfully and bringing it to life once more. She waved a hand sightlessly before the door and was already moving when the door hissed open, when Finn let out a curse at suddenly entering the fight.

                Kylo Ren spun weakly, his face pinched. “Rey, _no_!” he shouted.

                She didn’t register his words at all. Barely even aware that she was advancing, that she had even activated the lightsaber in her hand, she felt herself move outside of herself, no longer in control. This was the Force then, she thought hazily; knowing things, feeling what would come before it even had the chance to begin, to occur. This weightlessness, this complete _certainty_ , in herself and in the actions of others.

                Her hand lifted as Phasma released a blast, as the knight turned back around, his body tensing at the attack.

                The beam froze in mid-air between the enemy and Rey, where she stood just behind Ben Solo.

                Somewhere deep inside, she understood that she had done it. Her hand was raised, her fingers clawed, her eyes staring at the flickering beam blankly. But the entire world felt so far away and she couldn’t even tell if she physically even breathed anymore.

                Kylo Ren also stared at the hovering beam hanging in the air before him, his entire form stiff and still in the silence that had fallen in the corridor.

                With a pulse of her palm, Rey sent the blaster beam back at the Captain, barely registering as she lurched out of its path, as the General dodged sideways as well to allow the blast to catch a Knight of Ren and fling him backward into the remaining knights.

                Grimacing, Rey swept her hand sideways immediately, the Force surging through her, and several stormtroopers flew to the right, colliding against the wall and toppling over each other into a pile.

                Hux raised his weapon, firing angrily as more stormtroopers squeezed in behind him.

                Rey lifted her lightsaber blindly, deflecting the first beam as if blocking the sun from her face, and halting another blast a matter of inches from Kylo Ren’s chest with a quick darting motion.

                The knight seemed to exhale wearily for a moment before he also began to gesture; sending Hux’s weapon from his hand and hurling the incoming knights back out through the door, batting at Phasma as she rose only to get hurled backward into a group of her stormtroopers. The motions seemed to overexert him, though, for he hunched and then fell back to his knees, the hard sound reverberating throughout the corridor.

                “Take him!” Rey shouted back to Finn, advancing past Kylo Ren toward the stormtroopers and sending the beam frozen beam back toward the general with a wide swing of her arm.

                “Rey-” the knight uttered as she swept by, his shoulders drawing in as he curled over in pain.

                Behind her, Finn and Poe converged on Kylo Ren, the pilot snatching at him as Finn bent low and slipped under one of the knight’s arms, hauling him to his feet.

                _“Rey!”_

                She deflected another blaster beam with Luke’s lightsaber as she moved, the thrum of the weapon running through her body, through her blood. She had never felt so complete and so completely taken over. She felt then that she could see what was to come before it happened; the beams from their weapons, the direction the troopers struck from, the quick exchange of glances between the Captain and the General.

                “Rey, let’s go!” Finn shouted from the doorway. “We have X-wings in the sky! They’re going to tear this place apart!”

                Rey glanced over her shoulder as Finn and Poe hesitated at the doorway, Ben hanging half-unconscious between them. “Get him out of here! I’m right behind you!” she called back to them, turning to look at the First Order once more as they began to regroup.

                Without another word, Finn and Poe dragged the Knight of Ren with them as they went and Rey began to back away, deflecting beams and flinging stormtroopers and knights back as they struggled to advance. As she reached the doorway she had come through, she withdrew behind its frame and switched off Luke’s lightsaber, waiting the smallest moment as she took in the First Order struggling to right themselves.

                Then she flicked a hand at the console.

                Power surged through it once more, sparking and thrumming. The door slid shut before her, separating her from the First Order and deflecting beams from weapons as they struck its surface. And with one last look, just for good measure, Rey flung Hux sideways into Phasma, relishing the impact as they collided and fell to the floor in a tumble of limbs and chrome armor.

                Hiding a smile, Rey turned, extinguishing the power to the console, and ran to catch up with the Resistance.

 

                Even wounded, Kylo Ren was a handful.

                Anger slipping across his face, Finn staggered backward as the knight pushed the former stormtrooper away, as he yanked his lumbering body away from the Resistance pilot, Poe. He fell against the cold metal walls of the transport, even then attempting to distance himself from the group, from the very people that had just spirited him away from his home. _“Let go of me!”_

                Finn immediately righted himself and then stiffened, coming to a halt and merely clenching his hands into fists at his sides. He _hated_ him. He hated the sight of him, and he hated the fact that the very man that had trapped him in a bath of bacta and physical therapy for six months, though suffering now, was still acting like a proper pain in the ass.

                Beside him, Poe also straightened and quickly looked at him, dark eyes pleading with him to calm down.

                Poe should hate him as much as he did, Finn reflected, still breathing harshly as the transport fell into a soft hum as the engines shifted. And then, as the ship began to lift to carry them away, he felt Poe near, and his presence was an immediate comfort, a deep breath of air. Exactly what he needed.

                But then, as Kylo Ren collapsed onto a hard cot wearily, Rey came from the entryway and moved to his side, her arms already reaching out for him. She wore black, he noticed; a harsh color that Finn didn’t recognize on her slender form. But the expression on her face was enough to quiet his anger and his thoughts as she seated herself beside the injured knight, as she called out for droids or medical personnel to tend to the man that had sliced him through his back and incapacitated him for half a year.

                The General appeared at the doorway leading to the large hull of the transport and she could only stare at her son for a long moment as he struggled in Rey’s reaching arms, as the transport ship lifted into the air to escort them all away from the demolished First Order base.

                “Ben. Ben, stop. _Ben_ -” Rey called loudly, grimacing as she attempted to control his flailing limbs, as he hunched over the wound in his side and bled into his glove.

                “I can’t stay here,” he whispered and he uttered it again, looking around and seeing strangers surrounding him, enemies for so long. He turned his eyes toward her as she leaned into his line of sight and, even as he recognized her, he shook his head in a rising panic. “I can’t stay here. Rey. _Rey_. I can’t stay here. I can’t stay here. Leave me here, let me out-”

                “No. No,” she murmured and she pulled at him, trying to drag his straining form against hers, to pull him down to her where she sat on the cot. “You can’t go back. You can’t go back to them. They’ll kill you; you can’t go back to them-”

                _“No!”_ he shouted and he attempted to lunge to his feet, to pull free of her arms. “No! I have to go back! I have to go back-”

                Wincing as he inadvertently struck her in the cheek with a thrashing elbow, she waved Resistance members away, Finn and Poe included, and she wrestled his weak form back down against her. Even as he pulled to free himself, she turned her attention to her side and dug into her pocket, dragging out a long silver device. Grimacing under the knight’s strength, she yanked his head and shoulders down, forcing him into the cot beside her.

                A second later she stabbed the large injector syringe into his neck and depressed the trigger.

                A soft sigh left the knight’s lips as the injector hissed and released the sedative into his blood. Faltering, Kylo Ren could only shake his head as Rey tossed the injector aside and cautiously lowered his weakening form back to the cot, half of his body hanging off the surface, legs shifting along the floor.

                “Get him up,” Rey ordered Poe and Finn, her voice trembling nonetheless. She rose from the cot as she gave the command, pulling at Ben’s arm and chest as Finn and Poe moved to lift his feet off the floor and onto the cot.

                Once situated and laid out on the surface, Rey seated herself beside the knight as he finally lost consciousness in her hands. And as she curled up beside him, they had all understood at last.

 

** Last Chapter – Epilogue: **

What if he decided this entire attempt wasn’t worth it? What if he decided one night, when everyone was asleep, that he would somehow escape from his cell and return to the First Order? That he would find her unworthy of all this trouble he was being subjected to? And what if he did return to what he considered his home and he spilled the Resistance’s secrets; their location, the amount of fire power they had, the admirals and captains they had in their arsenal?

What if he turned away from her after everything he had done for her? After everything she had done for _him_?


	38. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys. This is the last chapter. I refuse to get emotional. BUT ITS GOING TO HAPPEN SO JUST TAKE IT!!
> 
> First of all, THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING. I cannot say this enough. I may have written this fic but you guys MADE the fic. For me and for other readers coming in or readers only now commenting. It has been an AMAZING experience posting as it was to write, and I can't thank you guys enough for it. Some of you were more vocal than others but all of the comments were appreciated and made this whole process all the more amazing. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.
> 
> A special thanks to TigerofSummer for being my beta with this fic. You were invaluable and I will never forget it. Thank you.
> 
> I make it seem like I just won an academy award or something, right? LOL!!
> 
> Second, I have another fic just about finished that I will post once I go over it for errors and stuff, and then I will get to work on the one-shots as I post the next fic. It's currently standing at about 15 chapters and is about 30 pages longer than Emergence but still a smaller fic like that one as compared to this one, BDaT. Once I finish it I also have to do the playlist/soundtrack to it because they go hand in hand for me. So it might take me a bit still but not TOO too long. When I do post, I hope you guys decide to read that fic as well. It's quite smutty. And by quite I mean VERY. Yay!
> 
> Third, I hope you enjoy the epilogue and that it wraps the story up well for you all. This fic took me about a year and a half to write but it was totally worth it because of all of you guys reading so, once again, THANK YOU.
> 
> And finally, if you guys are following me on tumblr, PLEASE MESSAGE ME AND TELL ME YOUR Ao3 name on tumblr! I have readers following me out of the blue and I have no idea where you come from, LOL! And also, please try out the playlists for this fic (and Emergence, if you read that fic too). Links are on my profile page on this site!
> 
> Thank you guys one last time and I hope you like the epilogue!! *is emotional once again*

Epilogue:

 

                For the following few weeks, Rey found that she missed his touch more than she would allow herself to believe.

                He had regained consciousness during the trip back home and had been apprehended immediately upon touching down to the new Resistance base. Even as they had disembarked, Ben secured between two security personnel, she had followed worryingly. He was not a simple prisoner; he could easily take their entire base apart and kill everyone within it.

                But he had allowed himself to be escorted, to be manhandled as he had been stripped of his clothes and his lightsaber, as they had jostled him while taking him from the interrogation rooms down to the cells. The same cells he had broken out of and kidnapped her from, with help from the treasonous admiral and her son. He had swallowed the entire process silently, blankly, and she had watched it all with her heart in her throat. This was not him. This was not Kylo Ren. Possibly not even Ben Solo.

                And he deserved it, she realized, but it still tore at her that he would be treated in such a way.

                He had been secured away in a cell by himself, the other cells in the room absent of other prisoners. They didn’t trust him to be around other people, the same way he had imprisoned her what seemed like so long ago; alone, with no one to visit her that she could turn, that she could seduce into helping her escape. That she could mind trick into setting her free.

                He sat behind bars now in their base and even that worried her, caused her to pace and stress.

                What if he decided this entire attempt wasn’t worth it? What if he decided one night, when everyone was asleep, that he would somehow escape from his cell and return to the First Order? That he would find her unworthy of all this trouble he was being subjected to? And what if he did return to what he considered his home and he spilled the Resistance’s secrets; their location, the amount of fire power they had, the admirals and captains they had in their arsenal?

                What if he turned away from her after everything he had done for her? After everything she had done for _him_?

 

                She had made it a habit to visit him. No, not a habit. A necessity. She needed to see him always, constantly, and she found that she could spend hours crouched beside his cell, seated just outside of the bars of beams to his prison, and exchange words with him. Words, quips, smiles. _Pained_ smiles. Tears, almost, when she could only reach out to grasp his hand but couldn’t fully feel him.

                He was quiet for the most part, trapped behind the cell beams, pacing when she had come to see him; as if he couldn’t sit still, which she found ridiculous because she had always thought him mostly calm when she had been taken from the Resistance base.

                “It was because of you,” he had murmured one day when she had questioned it inwardly, confused but willing to push it aside. “You shared your patience with me.” His eyes had shifted away from her, blinking rapidly, wearily. “The day that I came to you in our dreams, that you became mine…” He inhaled deeply, his dark eyelashes fluttering. “I knew. I had this… _calm_ in me because I knew. I knew that I needed to come for you. And we shared that feeling, that emotion. We both settled and shared patience between us; myself knowing that I needed to come for you, and you because you felt that something had happened that night. That was all it took.”

                And she had felt her heart break at his words. “Then take from me,” she had whispered, her eyes sliding shut, her hand clutching his tightly through the beams, careful so as to avoid being struck with volts of electricity as she had bowed over her knees. “Just take from me in here.”

                She had understood then what it was to be trapped in a cell as he was now, but she had never been under anyone’s surveillance in her cell or in his quarters when they had been at their most intimate. She knew in that moment that they were being monitored and she had hated that she could feel so much and that he could feel the same but need to hide it behind the consistently stoic expression on his face.

                Until the day she had come to see him and had frozen in place at the doors as they had slid shut behind her and trapped her in the room to witness what she had not been meant to see.

                The General sat in the cell; not at arm’s length of the prisoner or even at the doorway. She sat with her son in the cell behind the wall of beams that enclosed them within. Rey had made the mistake of entering, of witnessing such a sacred scene and she had been at a loss upon seeing Leia in the cell with her son, clutching him as he had bowed over into her lap, his face hidden away beneath her hands and arms, concealed within her hold as she had forgiven him.

                And in that moment, Rey had felt her breath escape her, had hovered for a simple moment and met Leia’s eyes with a stricken gaze before blinking tears away and spinning back around to leave the cells, to leave Ben Solo in his mother’s pained embrace.

                To leave him in her forgiveness.

 

                She came to him one day in his cell. As usual, she seated herself on the floor beside the laser beams, just outside of his cell.

                He was in a calm state today; she wondered if he had been sapping at her or if he had finally begun to master patience within himself.

                “Actually, it’s easier when you’re here,” he informed her, stretched out along his metal slab of a bed, his arms crossed behind his head. And he turned to look at her, the side of his lips curling up slightly as if he had made a joke.

                She scooted closer to the cell beams, curling her arms around her knees to compress herself. “Take what you need,” she murmured and she bowed her head to her arms, resting her chin on her forearms as she turned her head to look at him.

                His brows turned up as she pulled herself in tightly. “Rey…” he murmured, his voice low and comforting as he gazed at her. Then, as if fighting with himself, he turned his head away, looking toward the metallic wall at his side as his expression hardened. “Why are you here? Why do you come here?” He asked and he shook his head harshly, blinking blindly at the wall. “I don’t need you here.”

                Her eyes slid closed, her breath leaving her in a long sigh. “Yes, you do,” she whispered and she turned her cheek along her forearms, her light eyes sweeping over his long form in the cell. “You need me the way I needed you when you held me captive. You need someone that you can believe in. And that’s me now for you just as you became that person for me.”

                He didn’t reply for a long moment, his stiff stare turned to the wall at his side. “It doesn’t matter. I’m never getting out of this cell. And if they decide to move me to a high security facility, I’m never going to see the sun again.” And his head bowed along his crossed arm, dipping away.

                She frowned and uncoiled, sitting up. “That’s not true,” she said and she turned toward the beams, feeling their static, forced to hover just outside of their width. “Ben, look at me. Look at me.”

                He breathed deeply into his arm before shifting and turning his head back toward her.

                She loved his face in that moment as she let her eyes travel over his cheeks and his full mouth, as she met his eyes directly. “You have to understand that after today, after what you did for me…” She shook her head helplessly. “You don’t have a home with them anymore, whatever home you think you did have. It’s not there anymore.”

                He gazed at her but his stare became distant, his expression becoming blank once more.

                She was losing him. “But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a home here. That you don’t have a home with me.” And she felt her brow draw up, felt tears threaten to rise. “I’m here and I’m waiting for you. We’re all waiting for you,” she whispered and she brushed at her eyes roughly, wishing she could stop the tears from gathering.

                He paused for her as she turned her head away, as she composed herself. “Then what are you asking for, Rey? What are you asking of me?” he asked her softly, his brow drawn low. “Because I feel it in you, I feel it in our bond. You need something from me even as I stay trapped in here.”

                He already knew, she realized as she wiped her tears dry, as she looked at him with reddened eyes. “You know what we want from you,” she stated with a tremor in her voice.

                “Then ask it,” he ordered her bluntly, his dark eyes shifting low before meeting hers head on. “But _you_ ask it because I won’t listen or give it to anyone else except you.” And there was a plea in his tone as he spoke, as he stared at her.

                Returning the gaze, she breathed in deeply before settling. “We need you to tell us everything you know concerning the First Order,” she said to him carefully, her hands clutching her knees tighter. “And I need you to understand that from now on…” She shook her head. “You’re _with_ us. You are with the Resistance. You do not belong to the First Order anymore.”

                He continued to stare at her for a long moment, long enough that she thought that she had indeed lost him. “I don’t belong to the Resistance, Rey,” he said to her quietly. “You know that as well as I do.”

                “No,” she stated in a voice thick with tears, shaking her head. “No, that’s not true-”

                “It is true,” he said, his tone still soft. “I don’t belong to the Resistance and I don’t belong to the First Order. I belong to only two people now and that was the choice I made, the understanding I had, when I chose to escape with you.” He turned his head back along his arm, eyes lifting to the ceiling overhead.

                Rey stared at his profile, her words tentative. “Who are the two people?” she asked.

                He took a moment to respond. “I belong to myself. And I belong to you,” he murmured and he closed his eyes for a breath, his jaw shifting as if the words had taken too much out of him.

                Rey almost leaned into the laser beams with her need to touch him then, to make him realize that she felt the same.

                “ _The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead.”_

                But Ben was continuing, speaking quietly. “I recognize that I am paying for the things I have done in my life, that this is my punishment. That my punishment could very easily have been death, that it _should_ have been that. That I can easily walk out of these cells and leave, walk away from… _all_ of this,” he said, his voice a low hum in the silence, running even lower than the thrum of the lasers. “But if I had to make the decision again, I would repeat it. I would _repeat_ it.” His eyes tightened shut as he whispered the words again almost mournfully, exhaling them painfully. “For myself, for you. And _only_ for those two people would I do this all over again.” He nodded slightly, his brow turning up, reaffirming his words. “I would do it again because I owe it to them.”

                Bowing her head to hide away the tears that were rising once more, she nodded along with him in understanding.

                Sighing wearily, he continued. “I will help you. I will give them what they need to destroy the First Order,” he said. “And if you ask it of me, I will fight with you. But this is not my home and it never will be.”

                Rey straightened and shook her head. “But your home is with me,” she said to him hoarsely through her tears.

                “And your home is here with them,” he stated as if he had expected her response and his eyes came open, training on the ceiling overhead, avoiding her gaze. “If you decided one day to leave this place and these people, I would not remain here in your absence.”

                Rey gestured in confusion. “And your mother?” she asked desperately, her voice falling from her lips heavily.

                His eyes shifted from the ceiling, becoming distant. “She understands,” he murmured blindly. “All children eventually leave their parents.”

                 Gazing at him, Rey felt her heart break. How different they were and, in the end, how similar. And what a decision he would leave her with one day if he were to be acquitted of his crimes or released from imprisonment. Would she be able to make the choice that he had made, to leave the place he considered as close to a home as the First Order had been, and to leave it for her? Would she be strong enough?

                And she realized a moment later that the answer was yes. Running her eyes over him as he settled into silence, she realized she would do it. Her, the girl who had never wanted to leave Jakku because she had waited for her family to come back for her; she would leave the only home she’d ever had for him.

                _“Do not be afraid of what you do not understand. Nor should you be satisfied with what you believe you know. Nothing is ever fully written.”_

                “Okay,” she whispered then, nodding. “Okay.”

                Ben turned his head to look at her, his eyes focusing.

                Returning the gaze, she seated herself back on her rear beside the laser beams and carefully reached a hand through the beams, avoiding their current and waving her fingers at him. “Come sit with me. Take my hand so I can show you the sun,” she said to him, the tears finally leaving her voice.

                Since he had been apprehended, he had remained within his cell unless being escorted to bathe. He hadn’t had a choice in what type of shower to take and she had not been allowed anywhere near him in the guard assigned to him. But as the days had worn on and he had been hidden away in the cells far below ground at this new base, she had taken it upon herself to sit with him and share visions of the sun with him, to make him feel the warm rays as if he sat beneath them himself, as if he wasn’t imprisoned deep within the earth. He had been her sun during Snoke’s attacks; how could she not be his when he needed it the most?

                Looking at her hand, he shifted his eyes to her face once more before slowly rising from the hard slab and nearing. Lowering to the floor to mirror her, he pressed his back to the wall and tilted his head along the hard surface, clasping her hand, fingers threading through hers gently.

                Feeling her first real smile since she had come to visit with him, she sighed, raising her eyes to his.

                He returned her stare and after a moment, he also gifted her with a small tilt to his lips, his eyes becoming hooded as he merely gazed at her serenely.

                The lasers buzzed for a moment and suddenly faded, cutting off and leaving them facing each other without barriers.

                Rey quickly looked over toward the surveillance cameras in the corner of the room before understanding raced through her. Then she didn’t waste an additional second, spinning back around and yanking her hand from Ben’s to throw her arms around his shoulders instead as she pushed herself across the border into his cell.

                He embraced her just as quickly and just as closely, his breath in her ear as he sighed in contentment, as she somehow tightened her grip on him. And when his mouth found hers, she came apart in his arms, feeling as if everything was finally going to be okay, as if the future could possibly be as bright as she had longed for though she hadn’t let herself put too much hope into it.

                _He can’t reach us here. He’ll never reach us again._

                Her words and her hope were as brilliant as the image that she slipped to him through their bond; an image of the sun gleaming over green meadows filled with wildflowers, streaming through the canopy of trees overhead.

                Of a little brown-haired girl stretched out in the grass, sleeping in the warmth and soft breeze as the rays beat down on her.

                And finally, the vision of the little dark-haired boy that tangled his fingers with hers as he lay down beside her and joined her in the sun.


End file.
